Working Papers
in the working papers series
Working Papers report Center-related research in progress and range from presentation materials to manuscript drafts. Abstracts are available online for most of the recent versions of papers, all of which can be accessed from the listings on this page. Please direct full text inquiries or any questions to Barbara Schneider at bschneid@msu.edu.
2003
03-01
Mathew Weinshenker
"Expected Maternal Employment across the Life Course: A Latent Class Regression Analysis"
Children's expected gender roles are often studied, but usually from a static perspective. Researchers rarely take into account that such expectations may be specific to stages of the life course, as in the case of maternal employment. In this paper, I find that many adolescents from a sample of predominantly two-parent, dual-earner families do distinguish between levels of maternal employment in their future marriages, based on the age of the mother's child. Using latent class analysis, I discover teens have four distinct mental pictures of expected maternal employment: these are labeled "quick return," "gradual return," "homemaker," and "permanent part-time." Adolescents' mothers' work histories predict the kind of expectations they have, but this is not the only predictive parental characteristic. Father's participation in housework tends to make children expect more maternal employment, and a challenging home environment has opposite effects depending on the child's gender.
03-02
Casey B. Mulligan, Barbara Schneider, and Rustin Wolfe
"Non-response and Population Representation in Studies of Time Use"
Researchers have debated which methods are most valid and reliable for studying time use. One key instrument for measuring time use is the time diary, which like other instruments such as surveys have unique analytic properties that, if not adjusted for, can bias estimates. To assess sampling and nonresponse bias and potential under- or over-reports of various activities, we compare adolescents' time use across three different datasets. Results of these comparisons are used to show how investigators can statistically adjust time use data, using different types of instruments to obtain more accurate estimates of time spent in various activities.
03-03
Mathew Weinshenker, Barbara Schneider, and Linda Waite
"Work/Life Issues from a Sociological Perspective"
As a discipline, sociology has consistently examined the nature of work from both a macro and micro level, focusing on societal, organizational, and individual perspectives. Relying on a variety of methodological approaches, sociologists have asked questions such as: How do societies organize the production and distribution of goods and services? What are the various roles and relations of authority, trust, social obligation, sanctions, and rewards within different work environments? What are the formal functional characteristics of different occupations, and what consequences do they have for individual economic and social well-being? And more recently, how are the processes of globalization influencing the social organization of work? As our labor force has increasingly included mothers with children under the age of 18, many leading sociologists have turned their attention to the roles of working mothers in the labor force and their relationships with their families. This redirection has opened several new areas of study related to the nature of work and the emotional spillover it produces in the home.
03-05
Holly Rice and Barbara Schneider
"Feeling Good and Feeling Cooperative: The Importance of Religious Practice, Familial Duties, and Service Activities in the Lives of Adolescents"
Current research on the association between youth and religion suggests that adolescents who are more involved in religious pursuits are less likely to engage in risky behaviors (such as smoking or drinking) and benefit from gains in academic achievement and involvement. These findings raise several questions that this paper investigates: Is it possible that participating in religious activities could result in positive emotional benefits for adolescents? Are there other pro-social activities (e.g., altruistic activities, fulfilling familial responsibilities) that are not religiously based that might also provide positive emotional benefits for adolescents? What is the relationship between religiosity (viewing oneself as religious) and religious practice? Analyses of data from the 500 Family Study show that pro-social experience appears to be highly related to altruism, familial duties, and religious practice; hedonic experience is more closely tied to religious perceptions than participation in religious practice, altruistic activities, or familial duties; and adolescent overall well-being would be strengthened with a greater emphasis on spiritual development within the family.
03-06
Lianne M. Kurina, Barbara Schneider, and Linda J. Waite
"Cortisol Patterns Show Little Relationship to Stress or Symptoms of Anxiety or Depression in Working Parents"
Acute stressors are known to increase cortisol levels in humans. Whether people who experience more stress have higher levels of cortisol on average, however, is still uncertain. The goal of this study was to test whether changes in diurnal cortisol patterns are associated with stress or symptoms of anxiety or depression in healthy adults. Saliva samples were collected for cortisol analysis at six timepoints over two days from 91 adults (57 women and 34 men) in dual earner families in cities across the United States. We analyzed the diurnal cortisol slope and time-weighted average cortisol levels of these individuals in relation to 1) two measures of stress from a questionnaire survey, 2) diary reports of stress across the two days of cortisol sampling and 3) self-reported depression and anxiety. Cortisol slopes and average cortisol levels varied widely both across individuals and within individuals across the two days. Out of twenty-four comparisons made, only two associations between stress or psychological symptoms and cortisol were significant at the p < 0.05 level, consistent with what would be expected by chance. Men with more severe symptoms of anxiety had significantly higher average cortisol levels and, contrary to expectation, women who reported that work was more frequently stressful had significantly lower average cortisol levels. These results argue strongly against the model that either stress or psychological symptomatology is an important determinant of differences in diurnal cortisol patterns in healthy individuals.
03-07
Linda Waite, Barbara Schneider, and Holly Rice
"Studying Working Families: The Experience Sampling Method"
The Experience Sampling Method (ESM), a form of time-diary, can be an extremely useful tool for evaluating and validating self-report data. The Alfred P. Sloan 500 Family Study contains both survey and ESM information from parents and adolescents in middle-class, dual-earner families. This paper uses both the self-report (from the survey) and time-diary (from the ESM) data that are available for parents in the 500 Family Study to evaluate estimations of time spent on household tasks, as an example of the utility of the ESM. Self-report estimates alone suggest that both husbands and wives overestimate the amount of time they spend on housework. When evaluating the reported primary task from the ESM, we see that time spent on housework is significantly less than that reported in the survey. However, with the ESM data, we could also incorporate reports of housework as the secondary task (to account for multi-tasking) and time spent thinking about housework (to account for household management). With this additional information, we see that actual time spent on housework (based on ESM estimates) approaches reports given in survey data, although the survey estimates remain larger. Therefore, this paper provides an example of how ESM data can provide additional information beyond that of survey self-report or the traditional time diary.
03-08
Shira Offer and Barbara Schneider
"A Contextual Approach To The Study Of Social Support Among Working Families"
This research proposes a contextual approach to study of social support among dual earner families. Using data from the 500 Family Study, we focus on the activities family members engage in, locate them in their relevant spheres of interaction (unbounded and bounded), and examine their association with social support. We find that extra-familial social support varies by parental work conditions, specifically fathers' time at work and mothers' work autonomy, and is associated with community-level characteristics. An instrumental variable model further reveals that adolescents' social participation in the local community has a positive effect on family social support, suggesting that children constitute a mechanism through which parents connect to others and form local social networks. Implications for Coleman's theory of inter generational closure and social capital are discussed.
03-09
Barbara Schneider, Holly Rice, and Lisa Hoogstra
"The Importance of Religion In Adolescents' Lives"
Research has shown that religion plays an important role in adolescents' lives, positively impacting their academic performance, educational aspirations, worldview, and optimism about the future (Regnerus, Smith & Fritsch, 2003). Being religious also has been associated with adolescent psychological well-being, positive self-concept, and good physical health (Ellison, 1991; Oleckno & Blacconiere, 1991; Donahue & Benson, 1995) and with a reduced likelihood of engaging in risky behaviors such as smoking, drugs, and alcohol use (Hays et aI., 1986; Rohrbaugh & Jessor, 1975; Woodroof, 1985). Although researchers have investigated the relationship between religiosity and various outcomes, few studies have examined the mechanisms through which these relationships develop. Using data from an in-depth study of parents and their children, this paper examines the links among adolescents' positive emotional and behavioral outcomes, religiosity in the home, and extracurricular participation at school.
03-10
Elaine Marchena
"Can You Pencil Me In? Adolescents' Perceptions Of Parent Work-Family Conflict"
The intersection of work and family life has received considerable attention in these past few decades. This paper looks at one perspective that researchers have not had much opportunity to examine: work-family conflict ITom the perspective of children. In the tradition of stress transfer theory, I use survey data ITom an ongoing study of dual earner families (N=226) to look at how adolescents' assessments of parents' work-family balance varies with parents' job characteristics and parents' reports of work family conflict. Further, I examine other key aspects of family life (such as spending time together, communicating with parents, or sensing strong family support) to see how parents' work-family conflict might impact family life, and whether these prominently figure into adolescents' assessments of parents' performance. This unique opportunity to look at both mothers' and fathers' work experiences, as well as the adolescents' perspective, reveals three things: 1) adolescents look for particular signs and messages that let them know that parents are accommodating work to meet family needs; 2) that mothers, more so than fathers, are more effectively protecting their adolescents ITom directly observing the stress that work is placing on them; and 3) while the family landscape is very much affected by father's conflict, mothers in particular serve to buffer the effects of work on family life, and adolescents appear to be acutely aware of it.
03-11
Elaine Marchena
"Making the Grade: Parental Work-family Conflict Through The Eyes of Teens"
The intersection of work and family life has received considerable attention in these past few decades. Much of the literature focuses on how work and family role conflict influences family functioning and individual development (for review, see Perry-Jenkins, Repetti and Crouter 2000). Researchers have attempted to link work-family role conflict to both the quality of family life, and the social and cognitive development of its members. While they rarely reach consensus regarding the net impact of work on family life, their efforts have broadened our understanding of the multiple paths through which work operates to shape daily home experiences and outcomes. However, one path that has rarely been charted is the one that leads to children's assessment of how well parents negotiate the demands of work and family (See Galinsky 1999 for an exception). The absence of this line of inquiry is a glaring omission, and it renders the existing literature with little to offer in the way of understanding how children perceive and experience their parents' work-family role conflict. The impact that work has on cognitive and socio-emotional development is indeed important to look at. But more than that, parents' ability to negotiate the demands of work and family may play an important role in shaping children's, especially adolescents', future work and family aspirations. As such, it behooves us to understand the factors that enter most prominently into adolescents' assessments. Is it family time that matters? Maintaining parental relationships? Or is just knowing that parents do make a special effort to be there when they are needed?
03-12
Elaine Marchena
"Shared Experiences Of Work-family Role Conflict Among Middle Class Dual-Earner Couples"
This paper uses structural equation models to examine the linkages between spouses' work characteristics, family/personal management, and perceptions of role conflict. Using data from the Sloan Working Families Study, I found that perceptions of role conflict stemmed in large part from the emotional and physical strains from work. The ability to manage one's personal and family responsibilities played a mediating role in the cross-over effects of husbands' work to wives' role conflict, although a similar pattern was not found from wives' to husbands'. Attitudes regarding whose career receives priority in the marriage were also important, but it was primarily a husband's attitude that influenced his wife's ability to manage family affairs and her experience of role conflict.
03-13
Elaine Marchena
"All Work and No Play: Work, Family, Leisure Time, and Perceptions of Role Conflict Among Parents in Dual-Earner Families"
This paper examines the relationships between work and parents' involvement with children, time spent with spouses, and time used for personal endeavors. Data from the Sloan Study on Working Families were used to estimate structural equation models, simultaneously predicting work characteristics, time use and perceptions of work-family role conflict. Results suggest that parents may trade personal and spousal time for time with children, although time with children enters prominently into mothers' perceptions of role conflict, and time with spouse enters into that of fathers'.
03-14
Elissa Lippold and Kristy Beachy-Quick
"Unemployment and the Quality of Family Life: Hidden Benefits and Potential Consequences of Job Loss for the Middle Class"
This study explores the effects of job loss on adolescents and parent/child relationships among a sample of middle-class families. Through an extensive review of the literature, a theoretical model of job loss and family functioning is developed. Interviews from mothers, fathers, and adolescents in sixteen families illuminate the theoretical model and provide additional insights on job loss, specific to middle class, professional families. Overall, the data from this study lends support to the theoretical model described in the literature. Job loss impacts adolescents directly and indirectly through changes in mental health, marriage, and parenting. While half of the families described the job loss as stressful, half reported it to be a beneficial experience. Our data suggests the model is missing the beneficial aspect oftime. Job loss consistently led to increased time at home for the job loser. In families with high parenting quality, this increase in time allowed the job loser to reconnect with their adolescent child, and was viewed as positive by both parents and adolescents. However, in families with strained and/or distant parent/child relationships, increased time at home did not improve relationships and, in some cases led to increased parent/child conflict. Job loss for many families led parents to reevaluate their priorities, particularly the tradeoffs between income and time with their children. Policy implications are reviewed.
03-15
Sam Yount and Barbara Schneider
"Repositioning Shift Work"
The incidence of shift work in the United States has risen in recent years. Using data from that National Study of Families and Households (NSFH), this paper provides evidence showing that shift work is a schedule accepted by individuals who have few fiscal or community support options and is more prevalent among cohabiting versus married couples. A probit regression shows that cohabitation is a predictor of performing shift work. The paper concludes by discussing the potential social ramifications of this finding and the need for more current data concerning work schedules.
03-16
Matthew N. Weinshenker
"Maternal Employment Across The Life Course: Adolescent Expectations And Parental Influence"
I use latent class techniques to examine expectations about maternal employment in the future marriages of a sample of adolescents from middle-class, dual-earner families (N =182). Four distinct mental pictures of maternal employment appear; these are labeled quick return, gradual return, homemaker, and permanent part-time. Contrary to prediction, boys and girls' expectations are not significantly different from one another. Parental characteristics associated with expectations include the adolescents' mothers' work histories, fathers' participation in housework, and a challenging home environment. Parental attitudes and mothers' current work hours are not predictive. The results indicate the importance of taking temporality into account when studying aspirations or life plans. Key words: Adolescence, expectations, latent class analysis, life course, maternal, employment, socialization.
03-17
Alisa C Lewin
"Marriage Patterns Among Israeli Palestinians"
The Palestinian population in Israel is as appropriate case for examining responses to changes in education and the availability of mates because it has recently experienced both an increase in educational attainment and a fertility transition. Changes in marriage patterns among three religious groups, Moslem, Christian and Druze Palestinians in Israel, were compared, using the 1961, 1972, 1983 and 1995 censuses conducted by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. The findings show that Christians tended to marry later than Moslems and Druze. While education had similar effect on men and women, delaying marriage, sex ratios at marrying age had opposite effects for men and women, whereby a shortage of men increased delayed marriage among women and reduced delayed marriage among men. Marrying a younger man was affected by sex ratios at marrying age while marrying a less educated man was not.
03-18
Alisa C Lewin
"The effect of economic stability on family stability among welfare recipients"
The main rationale for defining two-parent families eligible for welfare in the United States was to keep families intact by eliminating an incentive for union dissolution. Making aid available to two-parent families does not eliminate other reasons for family instability, most notably women's reduced economic gain from marriage associated with having a chronically unemployed husband. AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) was replaced with TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families) in 1996. TANF differs from AFDC in many respects related to work incentives, time limits, and block grants, yet the question of the relationship of welfare, unemployment, and family instability remains as timely as ever, theoretically and politically. This paper explores the hypothesis that husband's unemployment increases union dissolution among welfare recipients. Data for the analysis were compiled for evaluating the Link-Up demonstration project, which took place in seven counties in California's Central Valley in 1992-1994. A discrete-time event history methodology was employed to examine family instability. The findings show that husband's unemployment and the family's long-term welfare dependency lead to breakup, net of race, age, and number of children. Keywords: welfare, family instability, unemployment.
03-19
Ann Courter
"Having it All: Dual Professional Careers and Family"
When men enter graduate professional programs in 2004, many of them believe that, with hard work, they can "have it all": a demanding and satisfying career, an intelligent, attentive, ambitious spouse, above-average, if not perfect children, and a nice house in the suburbs. The women those men will meet and marry in graduate school or in their first professional job believe that they, too, can have it all. Among their role models for this ideal life, proof of its possibility, are the families selected for this study (all of whom volunteered to be interviewed): dual career professionals, each earning above $80,000, with reportedly happy, well-cared for children. Does access to economic and social capital ameliorate conflict between work and family? Or do the stresses inherent in balancing child-rearing and work which are well-documented for many other workers also affect these high-earning professionals? This paper examines data from the 500 Family Study, a study designed to collect information about a variety of issues related to work and family life, such as parent-child relationsips, household division of labor, work-family conflict, and the socialization of children.
2002
02-01
Jennifer A. Schmidt, Barbara Schneider, and Lisa Hoogstra
"Emerging Occupational Identity: An Exploration of the Influence of Family"
There is little disagreement about the fact that the family has a strong influence on child and adolescent development. However, few studies are able to examine the enduring effects of the family on adolescents as they move into adulthood. This study uses longitudinal data to explore whether adolescents' experience of their parents in high school has measurable impacts on the formation of their occupational identities several years after high school graduation. The formation of these occupational identities, we argue, is self-enhancing but not entirely self-determined. We find that family background characteristics, future expectations, family dynamics, and daily experience with family while in high school are significantly associated with occupational identity several years after high school graduation. Interaction between these factors is predictably complex, but the results suggest that having parents who are involved and active in a teen's life have a significant impact on the formation of occupational identity. However, while parental interactions and supports may be effective in directing children away from underdeveloped career plans, these kinds of supports may also paradoxically prevent young adults from developing the most formed occupational identities.
02-02
Ariel Kalil and Thomas De Leire
"Parental Job Loss and Early Adolescent Adjustment in Black and White Families"
Economic instability and job displacement remain permanent features of the American economy. However, most existing studies of job loss examine consequences for the adult job losers. Little is known about how children are affected. The present study examines the effects of paternal and maternal job loss on changes in early adolescents' academic achievement, school attendance problems, and psychological adjustment in a national longitudinal data set (the National Educational Longitudinal Survey; NELS). Our analysis suggests that the negative effects of job loss are limited to those associated with the loss of fathers' jobs, and also are more severe among black families. Among black youth, father's job loss has a detrimental effect on math test scores and school attendance. Among whites, the negative effect of fathers' job loss is limited to youth's locus of control, although this effect is not substantively important. Mother's job loss shows very few negative effects. The effects of fathers' job loss are not explained by contemporaneous changes in parental monitoring or involvement. Finally, analyses suggest that effects are more detrimental among families of lower socioeconomic status.
02-03
Casey B. Mulligan and Yona Rubinstein
"Specialization, Inequality, and the Labor Market for Married Women"
The household specialization model is about the allocation of human time and effort between market and nonmarket sectors, and suggests that, over some substantial range, activity in each sector has increasing returns at the person level. We show how the specialization model qualifies other models of labor supply, by predicting that married female labor supply responds to the ratio of the gender wage gap to within-gender wage inequality, rather than to the gender gap itself. Hence, growing inequality within gender can have the same aggregate effect on labor supply as a falling gender wage gap. This is quite relevant for the 1970s, a period when the gender wage gap was stable while within-gender wage inequality was growing. It is also relevant for the 1980s, when the gender gap closed, and was reinforced by more growing inequality. Because inequality is predicted to have a larger effect when the gender gap is large, specialization may even explain why the wives entering the labor force since 1970 were disproportionately married to men with high and growing wages. The specialization model features the gap-inequality ratio because it is a proxy for the fraction of wives with earnings potential that (sufficiently) exceeds her husband's. This latter statistic has not received much attention in economics, but it has in other fields. We show how this fraction is related to earnings inequality and might be closely related to female labor supply.
02-04
Jennifer A. Schmidt and Brenda Padilla
"Self-esteem and Family Challenge: An Investigation of Their Effects on Achievement"
This study uses longitudinal data on a sample of tenth graders to investigate the associations between self-esteem, family challenge, and two indicators of adolescent achievement: high school grades and extracurricular involvement. Research on self-esteem and on family challenge has linked both of these factors to achievement in adolescents, but studies have not simultaneously examined the effects of these factors on achievement. The present study finds that family challenge and self-esteem are correlated with one another, and examines the effects of each of these factors on achievement, while controlling on the other factor. Controlling on self-esteem, family challenge was positively associated with grades in school, and was marginally associated with extracurricular participation. Controlling on family challenge, we did not find self-esteem to be predictive of grades or extracurricular involvement in longitudinal analyses, but we did find some evidence for a relationship in the opposite direction, with grades in tenth grade predicting self-esteem in twelfth grade. Results also suggest differences in academic achievement and extracurricular participation by race/ethnicity. Implications of these findings for the role of family challenge and self-esteem in the positive development of adolescents are discussed.
02-05
Rachel A. Gordon, Courtenay Savage, Benjamin B. Lahey, Sherryl H. Goodman, Peter S. Jensen, Maritza Rubio-Stipec, and Christina W. Hoven
"Family and Neighborhood Income: Additive and Multiplicative Associations with Youths' Well-being"
The present study extends prior research on additive and multiplicative ways by which family and neighborhood income relate to youths' well-being. Integrating substantive and methodological concepts, we demonstrate how various hypotheses would be revealed empirically with continuous income measures and clarify the relationship among different conceptual models. Substantively, we highlight ways in which match and mismatch between family and neighborhood income may encourage positive or negative social comparison and may influence youths' ability to participate in social networks and to access enriching resources. We illustrate these models using a sample of 877 primarily white boys and girls representatively drawn from three U.S. communities. We find that youths' receptive vocabulary is more strongly positively related to income in one context (family or neighborhood) when income is low in the other context (neighborhood or family). Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and impairment of daily functioning are highest among youth who live in contexts where their families' financial circumstances are advantaged or deprived in relation to their neighbors.
02-06
Jennifer A. Schmidt
"Religiosity, Emotional Well-Being, and Parent-Child Interaction in Working Families"
02-07
Kimberley S. Maier, Linda J. Waite, and Barbara Schneider
"Planning Ahead: An Examination of Adolescents' Mood, Motivation and Self-Esteem in the Intergenerational Transmission of Educational Values"
The affective aspects of the intergenerational transmission of educational values were studied using a sample of middle-class dual-earner parents and their teens. The supportive and challenging parenting practices employed by parents were examined to determine what effects different choices of parenting practices may have upon adolescent mood, motivation, and self-esteem. Parents provided data about the aspects of their families and work environments, and both the adolescents and parents participated in an ESM study that allowed analysis of detailed aspects of their daily lives, including their activities, companions, and psychological states. This allowed us to explore the family dynamics and daily interactions such as familial support and challenge, school guidance provided by the parents, and parental monitoring activities that accompany the educational planning process. We also examined adolescents' levels of mood, motivation, and self-esteem while they were at school and their mood and self-esteem while they were with their parents. In particular, we compared and contrasted the parenting practices and parent-teen interactions of parents who were employed in math/science careers and parents in other careers. Using a variety of statistical modeling techniques, we found three important results. First, math/science-employed mothers provide their daughters and sons with equitable levels of challenge and support, and seem especially able to boost their adolescents' mood and self-esteem at school. Second, math/science parents increased feelings of well-being and encouragement in their adolescents by discussing course-taking, plans for college, and future careers with them. And finally, math/science-employed parents employed stricter monitoring with their adolescents, thereby communicating high standards in a very concrete way.
02-08
Yun-Suk Lee, Barbara Schneider, and Linda Waite
"Children and Housework: Some Unanswered Questions"
Over the last several decades, the number of dual-earner and single-parent households has increased in the U.S. But mothers still carry the overwhelming burden of household labor and the amount of time children spend on housework has increased. Several scholars have raised concerns over the benefits and liabilities of having children spend significant amounts of time on household chores, especially ones traditionally undertaken by adults. This paper reviews the research examining how much time children actually spend on housework, whether recent demographic changes are related to differences in the amount of time children spend on chores, and how participation in housework influences children's social and cognitive development. The paper concludes with some academic and practical implications for children's involvement in household labor.
02-09
Mark R. Nielsen
"Are all Marriages the Same? Marital Satisfaction of Middle-Class Couples"
What factors shape husbands' and wives' assessments of marital satisfaction? This paper offers insight into the concept of marital satisfaction by adding couple variables to an analysis often based on variables about individuals. After doing quantitative analysis on summary statistics to compare marital satisfaction by gender and marital satisfaction, two models are constructed for ordered logistic regression. One model includes only individual items, while the other includes couple/relational items and controls for individual items. Results show clear relationship differences based on marital satisfaction. "Highly Satisfied" couples-in which both spouses agree they perform their roles well, make decisions and resolve disagreements amicably, communicate effectively, and are comfortable with their spouse's personality–seem able to master the intricacies of the husband and wife relationship. In contrast, "Moderately Satisfied" and "Not Satisfied" couples tend to rank inter-couple agreement areas much lower and relationships with others much higher. These findings suggest that couples who want to be highly satisfied in their marriage need to make the husband and wife relationship a high priority.
02-10
Nicholas P. Dempsey
"Television Use and Communication within Families of Adolescents"
Using data from the Experience Sampling Method (ESM-a beeper study which obtains reports of individual's use of time and their emotions throughout a seven-day period), this paper explores the use of television within families. Specifically, the hypothesis that television may be used to facilitate family interaction is tested. Little support for this hypothesis is found, as teens who watch more television report less interaction with their families. All family members report that television watching is a less positive emotional experience than other leisure activities. The paper also reports the finding that parents who watch greater amounts of television have children who watch greater amounts of television.
02-11
Matthew Weinshenker
"Dads Who Clean, Parents Who Push, and Adolescents' Expectations about Marital Roles"
Although it is well established that parents influence their children's gender role attitudes, few have asked whether parents affect children's expectations about the gender division of labor in their future marriages. Data from a sub-sample of Sloan Working Family Study participants with adolescent children is employed to answer this question. The father's participation in "female" housework tasks, such as cooking and cleaning, makes his children more likely to expect an equal division of responsibility for housework and childcare. This is compatible both with a view of housework as gender performance, as well as with the notion of a "stalled revolution" in family roles. The parents' gender role attitudes do not seem to affect adolescents' expectations about the marital division of labor. Neither does the mother's contribution to family income. However, parenting style affects children's expectations, a finding that seems ripe for further elaboration.
02-12
Yun-Suk Lee and Linda J. Waite
"Through a Relational Lens: Men's and Women's Appreciation for Housework"
This study investigates how appreciated married people feel for their performance of household tasks using the 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households. We argue that the meaning of housework can be conceptualized to be drudgery, labor of love, or some combination, and can not be fully understood without attention to the relational context in which it takes place. In particular, we argue that the incorporation of the relational context should help solve central problems in research on housework–who does how much and how satisfied are the partners with the (unequal) division of housework. We develop and test two competing sets of hypotheses concerning perceived appreciation for housework–one set of hypotheses from perspectives of relative resources, gender role ideology, and time availability and another set of hypotheses modified by the spousal relationships–using ordered logistic regression, analyzing women and men separately. Our results illustrate that the spousal relationship shapes the meaning of household labor and is important to married women and men as a reward for their unpaid work.
02-13
Mariana Gatzeva and Nicholas P. Dempsey
"Determinants of Housework"
Housework is a key component of time use in modern families. It is also increasingly difficult for families to live up to all the demand of housework, as more families move away from the 1950's breadwinner/homemaker paradigm, in which a wife generally did the vast majority of the housework while her husband did all the in the family, toward a dual-earner paradigm in which both husband and wife are engaged in work in the market. Previous studies have suggested that work habits and gender have important effects on how much housework individuals do. In this study, using time use and survey data on dual-earner families, we seek to determine when different people do housework, and how individual characteristics and characteristics of peoples jobs influence the amount of time they spend doing housework. We also explore whether the purchase of services of services actually reduces time spent doing housework.
02-14
Nathan D. Grawe and Casey Mulligan
"Economic Interpretations of Intergenerational Correlations"
Economic theory offers interpretations of intergenerational correlations that are different from the theories of other disciplines, and have important policy implications. Our paper presents a subset of those theories, and shows how they are consistent with observed mobility patterns as they vary across countries, demographic groups, and economic status measures. The data may suggest that the economic approach overemphasizes credit constraints, although more work is needed to further develop some of the alternative economic models. We also show how, in the models, "progressive" policy may reduce mobility depending on how the policy is administered and how mobility is measured.
02-15
Leticia Carillo
"Closing the Gender Gap: Gender Differences in Emotional Development, Academic Achievement, and Sports Participation"
Previous research finds gender inequities in emotional development, academic achievement, and sports participation. However, previous studies have failed to describe their sample's demographic characteristics (e.g., socioeconomic status and ethnicity). This study was designed to test previous findings in a predominantly white upper-middle-class sample of adolescents (n = 465). Participants' age ranged from 11 to 19 years (M = 15.03, SD = 1.73). As hypothesized, girls reported higher academic achievement. Contrary to our expectations, boys and girls did not differ in levels of anxiety, self esteem, and sports participation. As expected, boys experienced higher levels of at-risk and externalizing behaviors. Inconsistent with our expectations, boys reported greater distractions than girls. Our findings suggest the importance of considering and reporting contextual factors (e.g., socioeconomic status) and the need for further studies.
02-16
Talitha Bell
"Adolescent Television Viewing, Psychological Development, and Family Communication"
This study examines the amount of time adolescents spend watching television, their communication with their parents, and how television viewing affects adolescents' psychosocial development. It is hypothesized that heavy viewers communicate less with their parents and are less involved socially. It is expected that heavy viewers will experience more loneliness than light viewers. This study uses data from the 500 Family Study at the University of Chicago. The analysis used responses to the Experience Sampling Method and an Adolescent Survey. Television viewing (heavy and light viewing) was the independent variable. Dependent variables were items from the Adolescent Survey. Results indicated that adolescents who are heavy viewers communicate less with their parents than those who are light viewers. Heavy television viewers were found to participate less in social hobbies. There were no significant effects for age; however, ANOVA results indicated main effects for television viewing and gender as it relates to social hobbies. Among heavy viewers, boys were even less social than girls. Main effects for television viewing and communication between adolescents and parents were found. There was no significant relationship between television viewing and loneliness.
02-17
Barbara H. Wimsatt
"Evolution in Family Structure and the Persistence of Tradition: A Study of Work, Family, and Social/Emotional Support in Ten Medical Families"
This paper examines and illustrates the importance of (socially and emotionally) supportive relationships and interactions both within and external to families from which they draw sustenance as well as logistical assistance. The paper uses kindred concepts which can be loosely grouped under the rubric of sociality--that is, the stability through (historical) time of patterns of interactions among human groups. Related concepts appear in the search for evolutionary fitness conferred by altruism, and the healthy development of humans through infant-maternal bonding attachment.
Ten physicians were initially interviewed for this study in 1990, and as the ten-year mark approached, were re-interviewed. A number of people made or contemplated career shifts, sometimes involving family arrangements. For some, it was a time for reassessing priorities and downscaling career goals, and for others it was a time to shift into overdrive--their next career level. Two physicians, one man and one woman, decided to cut back on research goals because of various stresses related to pursuing them; at the same time, three other male physicians were gearing up to take on new challenges as heads of programs or in jobs with more career potential. And the woman who cut back on research was also taking on a new career challenge. Two women professionals (one physician), who had interrupted their careers while their children were in preschool were resuming them. A male whose career was interrupted because of his wife's career move had returned to work.
All of these changes were seen as positive by the individuals making them, but some of them may have exacted a cost from family members. One aspect of the most highly demanding careers was work that spilled over the boundaries of the workday in long hours and/or work carried home; so that even when people were home, they were virtually still at work. However, most individuals working excessively long hours tried to compensate for their time away by spending "quality time" with their families on weekends whenever possible.
02-18
Casey B. Mulligan, Barbara Schneider, and Rustin Wolfe
"Non-response and Population Representation in Studies of Time Use"
See paper 03-03
02-19
Allison Deschamps
"Law, Language, and Incomplete Institutionalization: How Does Parental Involvement Differ Within Two-Parent, Lesbian, Headed Families?
2001
01-01
Barbara Schneider, Alisa Ainbinder, and Linda Waite
"Working Families: Thresholds of Stress at Work and Home"
01-02
Nicholas Dempsey
"The Functions of Television and Other Media in Family Life"
See Paper 02-10
01-03
Marjorie Schaafsma
"Implementing Part-Time Work: Fragmentation/Coaction/Coalition (Creating Innovation by Resistance)"
See Paper 01-26
01-04
Matthew Weinshenker
"Imagining Family Roles: Parental Influence on the Expectations of Adolescents in Dual-Career Families"
Although it is well established that parents influence their children's gender role attitudes, few have asked whether parents affect children's expectations about the gender division of labor in their future marriages. Data from Sloan Working Family Study families with adolescent children is employed to answer this question. The father's participation in "female" housework task, such as cooking and cleaning, makes his children more likely to expect equal sharing of certain marital responsibilities, but the parents' relative work hours have no effect. This is compatible with the notion of a "stalled revolution" in family roles. The parents' gender role attitudes have few effects on adolescents' expectations about the marital division of labor, and the effects that do exist are in an unexpected direction. Intriguingly, parenting style affects children's expectations, a finding that seems ripe for further elaboration.
01-05
Rachel A. Gordon, Courtenay Savage, Benjamin B. Lahey, Sherryl H. Goodman, Peter S. Jensen, Maritza Rubio-Stipec, and Christina W. Hoven
"Family and Neighborhood Economic Resources: Additive and Multiplicative Associations with Youths' Well-being"
The present study extends prior research on additive and multiplicative ways by which economic resources in the family and neighborhood relate to youths' well-being. Integrating substantive and methodological concepts, we clarify the relationship among models. Substantively, we highlight ways in which match and mismatch between family and neighborhood income may influence youths' ability to participate in social networks and access enriching resources and may encourage positive or negative social comparisons. We illustrate these models empirically using a sample of 877 primarily white and middle income boys and girls drawn from three U.S. communities. Youth well-being is examined in several domains: mental health, impairment in daily activities, and receptive vocabulary. We find that youths' receptive vocabulary is more strongly positively related to income in one context (family or neighborhood) when income is low in the other context (neighborhood or family). Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and impairment are highest among youth who live in contexts where their families' financial circumstances are advantaged or deprived in relation to their neighbors. Using a diagnostic instrument, we also replicate prior findings that youth from lower income families and neighborhoods exhibit higher levels of conduct problems, anxiety and depression. Although we cannot test the posited social mechanisms that may underlie these findings, we suggest ways in which these processes might be pursued in future research.
01-06
Elaine Marchena
"Can You Pencil Me In? How Adolescents Assess Their Parents' Work-Family Conflict"
The intersection of work and family life has received considerable attention in these past few decades. This paper looks at one perspective that researchers have not had much opportunity to examine: work-family conflict from the perspective of the children. In the tradition of stress transfer theory, I use survey data from an ongoing study of dual earner families (N = 226) to look at how adolescents' assessments of parents' work-family balance varies with parents' job characteristics and parents' reports of work-family conflict. Further, I examine other key aspects of family life (such as spending time together, communicating with parents, or sensing strong family support) to see how parents' work-family conflict might impact family life, and whether these prominently figure into adolescents' assessments of parents' performance. This unique opportunity to look at both mothers' and fathers' work experiences, as well as the adolescents' perspective, reveals three things: 1) adolescents look for particular signs and messages that let them know that parents are accommodating work to meet family needs; 2) that mothers, more so than fathers, are more effectively protecting their adolescents from directly observing the stress that work is placing on them; and 3) while the family landscape is very much affected by father's conflict, mothers in particular serve to buffer the effects of work on family life, and adolescents appear to be acutely aware of it.
01-07
Brenda Padilla and Jennifer A. Schmidt
"Self-Esteem and Family Challenge: An Investigation of Their Effects on Achievement"
The purpose of this study was to investigate the associations between self-esteem, family challenge, and two achievement variables: high school grades and extracurricular involvement. Previous literature links self-esteem, family challenge, and achievement in adolescents. This study examines the relationships between family challenge, two measures of self-esteem, and two achievement variables using a sample of tenth graders over a three-year period from a past longitudinal study. First, factors associated with self-esteem were examined; then the relationship between self-esteem and achievement was studied with other factors taken into consideration. Regressions were run predicting self-esteem and achievement at Time 2 using measures of family challenge, self-esteem and achievement at Time 1 as predictors. The effects of demographic characteristics were also examined. Family challenge at Time 1 was a significant predictor of Time 2 self-esteem. The achievement outcomes of interest-high school grades and extracurricular involvement-were shown to be positively associated with one another. Race/ethnicity and family challenge were predictive of grades, while only race/ethnicity was predictive of extracurricular involvement. Even though there was a significant within-year relationship between self-esteem and grades, this relationship was not borne out in the longitudinal analysis. Finally the two different measures of self-esteem used in this study did not produce distinctive results from each other. Possible reasons no direct relationship was discovered between self-esteem in Time 1 and achievement are discussed. Other implications from this study are also discussed.
01-08
Chi-Young Koh
"Happy Together? A Comparison of Daily Emotions between Spouses"
This paper attempts to understand the dynamics of daily emotions in middle-class, dual-income couples. In comparing daily emotions between spouses, this paper goes beyond the question of gender differences (i.e., who is more depressed or happier in a quantitative sense). Rather, it examines how much and what kinds of emotions are shared between spouses. Assuming the existence of emotional interdependence between spouses, the degree of inter-spousal emotional correlation may reflect, other things being equal, important aspects of marital dynamics such as the level of integration or dependence in couples. Using a couple-matched data set collected using the Experienced Sampling Method, this paper reports preliminary results on married couples' daily emotions. The first section examines similarities or differences; emotional correlation between spouses is discussed in the second; and the final section discusses the impact of emotional correlation on overall couple-level daily emotions. Theoretical implications and methodological concerns are discussed in the concluding section.
01-09
Casey Mulligan and Yona Rubenstein
"Household versus Personal Accounts of the U.S. Labor Market, 1967-97"
We construct household-based measures of labor supply by aggregating answers to the usual weeks and hours worked questionnaire items. Household (H) measures are substantially different than the more familiar person (P) measures: H employment rates are relatively higher, with little trend, and relatively little fluctuation. From the H point of view, essentially all aggregate hours trends and fluctuations can be attributed to changes on the "intensive" margin and not the "extensive" margin-a characterization that is opposite of that derived from P measures. The cross-H distribution of hours is richer, and less spiked, than the cross-P distribution. We show how our H measures are consistent with a significant negative effect of one household member's hours on another's, and suggest that such an effect has important implications for interpreting business cycles, gender-specific labor market trends, the importance of the "added worker effect," and the microeconomic modeling of labor supply. For example, the household accounts show that the gender wage gap has closed dramatically among married people and that most of that closing is associated with growing wage inequality in the P accounts.
01-10
Yun-Suk Lee, Barbara Schneider, and Linda Waite
"Children and Housework: Some Unanswered Questions"
Over the last several decades, the number of dual-earner and single-parent households has increased in the U.S. But mothers still carry the overwhelming burden of household labor and the amount of time children spend on housework has increased. Several scholars have raised concerns over the relative benefits and liabilities of having children spend significant amounts of time on household chores, especially ones traditionally undertaken by adults. This paper reviews the research examining how much time children actually spend on housework, whether recent demographic changes are related to differences in the amount of time children spend on chores, and how participation in housework influences children's social and cognitive development. The paper concludes with some academic and practical implications for children's involvement in household labor.
01-11
Kim A. Weeden
"Is there a Flexiglass Ceiling? The Impact of Work Arrangements on Wages and Wage Growth"
An increasing proportion of employment contracts in the United States offer employees flexibility in their work schedules or work locations. These flexible arrangements are often touted as politically and economically viable solutions to contemporary employees' needs to balance work, leisure, and family. However, little is known about their consequences for employees' careers or their effect on aggregate levels of gender inequality in labor market outcomes. Using linked data from the 1997 and 1998 May Current Population Surveys, this paper explores the relationship between flexible schedules, flexible work locations, wages, and wage growth. A cross-sectional analysis of wages shows that men and women who have flexible work arrangements earn higher wages than their fixed-schedule and fixed-location counterparts. An analysis of wage growth over a one-year period suggests that the effects of flexible work, even in the short term, differ by gender. Men who have flexible work arrangements experience accelerated wage growth relative to other men, whereas women who have flexible work arrangements hold even with their fixed-schedule or fixed-location counterparts.
01-12
Janet Shibley Hyde, Nicole M. Else-Quest, and H. Hill Goldsmith
"The Impact of Children's Temperament and Behavior Problems on Their Employed Mothers"
An abundance of research has been conducted on the impact of dual-earner parents' employment on their children, yet the reverse process–the impact of children and their behavior on the work functioning of their parents–has been ignored. We investigated spillover from the mother role to the work role in a sample of more than 500 families. At 4 months, 12 months, and 4.5 years of age, child's temperament was significantly associated with mothers' work outcomes such as sense of role overload, work-role quality, and rewards from combining work and family. The evidence was consistent with mediational models in which the mother's sense of parenting competence and maternal affect were mediators of these effects.
01-13
Marjorie Schaafsma
"Women Lawyers in Law Firms: Conformity, Resistance and Disorganized Coaction"
Theories of gender in organizations should account for resistance to gender inequality. Ethnographic studies of gender in organizations have focused on structural or cultural determinants of inequality. Using a study of women lawyers in 5 corporate law firms I connect actions of resistance to male-dominance to labor practices embedded in repressive, paternalistic, and responsive organizations. Repressive and paternalistic firms inhibit consciousness, expression, and legitimation of women's gendered interests. Labor practices in the responsive firm enable women to articulate needs and create experiments with alternative ways of organizing work.
01-14
Judith Levine, H. Pollack, and M. E. Comfort
"Adolescent Parenthood and Child Outcomes: The Search for Causal Links"
See Paper 01-19
01-15
Marjorie Schaafsma and Elizabeth Rudd
"Finding the Organization in Work/Family Research: Leave-taking, Downshifting, and Organizational Change"
How and why we work determines the parameters of family life and is in turn determined by the organizations within which that work is embedded. We argue that work-family research should "bring the organization in." This paper reviews studies of two family-responsive policies: family leave and reduced hours work. Based upon this review, we identify several conceptual challenges the solving of which would be very fruitful for work/family studies: (1) how to grasp "culture"; (2) how to intervene in organizations to change them; (3) how to study the consequences of policies and practices for employees, for organizational practices, and for the broader American work/family culture. We then describe tools drawn from the organizational change research that can help us solve these problems.
01-16
Judith Levine
"Do Female Dominated Occupations Ease Work-Family Conflict?"
In trying to explain the development and maintenance of sex segregation in occupations, some scholars have argued that women choose lower-paid female dominated occupations because they offer compensating differentials that help workers balance work and family responsibilities. Others have refuted this supply-side argument, suggesting instead that sex segregation is due to demand-side factors or to a different supply-side phenomenon -- women's early socialization into choosing traditionally female occupations. Investigators have supported this latter argument by showing that married women and women with children are not significantly more likely to hold sex segregated occupations than single or childless women, despite their higher domestic burdens (Tomaskovic-Devey 1993) or by showing that hypothesized benefits of female dominated jobs do not accrue in practice (England et a11988, Glass 1990, Glass and Camarigg 1992). This paper continues this tradition by examining a potential benefit of female-dominated jobs rarely explored, namely psycho-social mood states at work that do not detract from the ability to focus on family. Using a unique dataset collected through the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), or beeper data, experiences at work are measured at several points a day throughout a one-week period. I find that while women in male-dominated jobs experience slightly elevated levels of competition and stress, women in female-dominated jobs are more likely to feel that others are expecting a lot of them and that they are feeling responsible for aspects of work. Taken together, these results suggest little support for the compensating differentials argument.
01-17
Ariel Kalil and Thomas Deleire
"Parental Job Loss and Adolescents' Educational Attainment"
Economic instability and job displacement remain permanent features of the American economy. However, most existing studies of job loss examine consequences for adults who lose their jobs. Little is known about how children are affected when a parent loses his or her job. The present study examines the effects of parental job loss during the high school years on white and black adolescents' educational attainment in a national longitudinal data set (the National Educational Longitudinal Survey; NELS:88). Educational attainment is assessed in terms of (a) receipt of any postsecondary schooling and (b) months of postsecondary schooling received (conditional on attending at all) two years after the 12th grade. Controlling for a wide array of covariates, results show that parental jobs loss reduces white adolescents' probability of receiving any postsecondary schooling and that these effects are concentrated among higher-income whites. Conditional on attending at all, there is a further negative effect of parental job loss on months of schooling received for white students. These negative effects of parental job loss on white adolescents' educational attainment are not well-explained by the losses of family income and students' pessimistic views of the future associated with parental job loss. Loss of family income is also strongly correlated with parental job loss for black adolescents. Among blacks, however, there is a significant positive effect of parental job loss on months of postsecondary education received, but this is limited to those who experienced a job loss but not an associated income loss. Among blacks, rate of college attendance and months of postsecondary education received were both negatively affected if families experienced both job and income loss during the high school years.
01-18
Yun-Suk Lee
"Through A Relational Lens: Men's and Women's Appreciation for Housework"
This study investigates how appreciated married people feel for their performance of household tasks using the 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households. We argue that the meaning of housework can be conceptualized to be drudgery, labor of love, or some combination, and can not be fully understood without attention to the relational context in which it takes place. In particular, we argue that the incorporation of the relational context should help solve central problems in research on housework-who does how much and how satisfied are the partners with the (unequal) division of housework. We develop and test two competing sets of hypotheses concerning perceived appreciation for housework-one set of hypotheses from perspectives of relative resources, gender role ideology, and time availability and another set of hypotheses modified by the spousal relationships-using ordered logistic regression, analyzing women and men separately. Our results illustrate that the spousal relationship shapes the meaning of household labor and is important to married women and men as a reward for their unpaid work.
01-19
Ariel Kalil and Judith Levine
"Following in Their Parents' Footsteps: How Characteristics of Parental Work Predict Adolescents' Interest in Parents' Jobs"
Using a subsample of dual-earner families with adolescent children in the Sloan 500 Family Study, we examine the relationships between mothers' and fathers' job characteristics and teenagers' interest in having jobs like their mothers' and fathers' in the future. We focus in particular on the roles of substantive complexity and autonomy in parents' jobs. Our results suggest that when fathers hold jobs that are substantively complex and when they also report having higher levels of autonomy at work, adolescents express greater interest in having a job like their fathers'. However, we found no association between these characteristics in mothers' jobs and teenagers' interest in having a job like their mothers' in the future. We link our findings to the literature on the intergenerational transmission of social class status, and also to the psychological literature on the role of parental work in adolescent identity development, and discuss ways in which occupational status might be transmitted across generations through specific characteristics of parents' jobs.
01-20
Linda J. Waite and L. A. Lillard
"Marriage, Divorce, and the Work and Earnings Careers of Spouses"
01-21
Jennifer Matjasko
"Maternal Work Characteristics, Mental Health, and Parenting: Effects on Adolescent Functioning"
01-22
Kim Maier, Barbara Schneider, and Linda J. Waite
"Math and Science Career Parents: How They Interact and Impact College and Career Planning with Their Teens"
Drawing on Bordieu's theory of cultural capital, we investigate how parents in math and science professions transmit educational values to their children. Expecting that parents in math or science occupations may socialize their adolescents differently than parents in other occupations because of their own educational and employment experiences, we examined the relationship between parenting practices and adolescent mood, motivation, and self-esteem. Using data from a study of 500 primarily middle-class dual career families and employing a variety of statistical modeling techniques, we find that mothers in math/science occupations provide their daughters and sons with comparable levels of challenge and support and seem especially able to boost their adolescents' mood and self-esteem at school. Parents in math/science professions (both mothers and fathers) also enhanced their adolescents' feelings of well-being and encouragement by discussing course-taking, plans for college, and future careers with them. And finally, these parents employed stricter monitoring with their adolescents, thereby communicating high standards in a very concrete way. Parents in other occupations tend to treat their daughters and sons differently, providing their daughters with more support as compared to their sons. These results suggest that everyday parenting practices are related to parents' professions and, for those not employed in math/science professions, reinforce traditional gender roles even among those families with high levels of education, social status, and household income.
01-23
Emma K. Adam
"Momentary Experience Sampling of Emotion, Cognition, and Cortisol Activity in Adolescents and Their Parents"
01-24
Emma K. Adam
"Parent Employment Conditions, Parent Emotion, and Parenting and Outcomes in Young Children"
01-25
Marjorie Schaafsma
"Persistence of Gender Inequality in Large Law Firms"
In this paper I describe experiences of women lawyers as they encounter and attempt to resist aspects of organizational cultures in three large corporate law firms. The law firm that does least well at hiring and retaining women I describe as repressive. The law firm that both hires and retains the most women lawyers I call responsive. In between these two organizational types is the paternalistic firm that is committed to hiring women, but does not retain them as effectively as the responsive law firm. I connect different performances of these law firms in the integration of women professionals with labor practices used to produce professional work. Labor practices define how legal work will be performed and establish measure for evaluation. With respect to the agenda of creating gender equality, labor practices are in place enabling women to articulate and interpret their needs and interests within the arena of the law firm. I suggest that analyses of actions of resistance by women to gender dominance and the relation of forms of resistance to existing labor practices should become incorporated in theories of gender in organizations. Labor practices both limit and enable organizations, and the men and women who work for them, to create gender equality.
01-26
Marjorie Schaafsma
"Shifting Boundaries and Bonds: Meanings of Part-Time Work"
In this paper I describe contrasting experiences of women in a gender-repressive organization and a gender-responsive organization as they attempt to advance an agenda of establishing family-friendly policies. Both organizations are large law firms (with 250-400 lawyers) included in a larger study of the experiences of women lawyers that focuses on how they establish professional identities. Here I focus on the practices women engage in to secure family-friendly policies for themselves and others in their law firms. I describe their efforts to contribute to family-sensitive workplaces and compare and contrast the emotional and psychological consequences to women who participate in the work of managing innovations from the frame of individual actions of resistance.
01-27
Kazuo Yamaguchi and K. Nikaido
"The Age of Sexual Initiation and Family Environments: Continuity and Change in Sexual Revolution"
01-28
Jaeki Jeong
"Time Use Estimates from the Experience Sampling Method (ESM)"
01-29
Marjorie Schaafsma
"Women Lawyers' Resistance to Work Overload: Making Time for Families"
This paper is based on qualitative interviews with women practicing law in large law firms. I use three individual stories to exemplify gender politics within three different organizational types: repressive, paternalistic, and responsive law firms. In the interviews, strategies used by women to negotiate reduced hours and reduced workloads in order to make time to care for and raise children was a frequent theme. Failure to resolve conflicts between work and family demands became a serious obstacle to the careers of some women. Struggles to achieve balance in work time and family time were shaped by organizational cultures in the law firms. Here I show how these three types of organizations: (1) produced different public/private boundary struggles in women's lives; (2) operated on implicitly different assumptions about what constitutes gender equality; and (3) created different strategies of resistance by women, informed by distinctive gender policies.
01-30
Ross M. Stolzenberg and Kristi Williams
"Work Satisfaction and Spouse Health: Effects of Husband's and Wife's Satisfaction with Household Work and Employment on Their Own and Each Other's Health"
The term "working families" has come to mean families in which the husband and wife both hold paying jobs. Although most families in the United States today are working families, the effects of this activity are not well-understood, in part because there are so many varieties of work, and there are so many different ways in which families can be affected by work. This paper presents the first results of a larger effort to understand the effects of married men's and women's employment on the well-being of their families. The basic strategy is to begin with simple concepts, apply the most rigorous statistical methods available, and then to move systematically and incrementally to more complicated concepts and correspondingly more complex models and methods. At this first stage, the paper focuses on the physical health of husbands and wives, and the hours of work that they supply to the labor market. Subsequent analyses will include more characteristics of employment, more family members, especially children, and more dimensions of well-being. Although past research leads one to expect to find that a wife's employment is deleterious to her husband's health, results show that a wife's employment of 40 or less hours per week does not adversely affect her husband's health over a three-year period. However, wife's employment of more than 40 hours per week does have a substantial negative effect on her husband's health over that same three-year time span.
2000
00-01
Elaine Marchena
"How Parents Structure Young Children's Experiences in Dual-Career Families"
As parents in dual-career families find themselves trying to meet the demands of work and home, they are challenged to provide young children with structured and meaningful experiences necessary for healthy development. Parents adopt many different strategies to accomplish this goal, from enrolling their 5 and 6 year olds in music classes and organized sports, to arranging play-dates with their young classmates, but an additional challenge lies in finding time to provide equally enriching experiences with family members at home, especially when children are less likely to be interested in activities that stimulated them in their toddler years. This paper combines data obtained from personal parent and child interviews, along with parents' time use diaries to explore (1) the types of activities and experiences -- both with and without parents -- that characterize young children's lives; (2) the strategies working parents use to provide children with these experiences; and (3) how children feel about the activities and time shared with parents. Preliminary findings suggest that the daily experiences of young children in dual-earner families are comparable to those of children in single-earner families. Parents in dual-earner families appear to be successful in structuring children's lives to provide children with daily peer and family activities. Children in dual-earner families are more likely, on average, to spend time with parents who show more positive feelings while being with them.
00-02
Jennifer Schmidt
"Daily Stressors in Families"
This study seeks to identify common daily sources of anxiety and stress in the home life of working parents. Using ESM and survey data, the paper identifies the daily activities and circumstances that mothers and fathers characterize as most stressful, and examines factors associated with the occurrence of these stressful situations. Preliminary analyses begin to examine the relationship between "daily hassles" and time use. The analyses suggest that paid work causes the most anxiety among fathers, while housework and chores are a more common cause of anxiety among mothers. Differences in anxiety levels in these activities may be related to gender differences in hours worked or multi-tasking.
00-03
Barbara Schneider
"How Teenagers Spend Their Time Outside of School: Are Parents and Their Teenagers in Agreement?"
The media and many scholars who study family dynamics often describe serious conflicts between adolescents and their parents, suggesting that teenagers misrepresent to their parents how they spend their time outside of the family. Teenagers are being increasingly portrayed as living secretive lives where they engage in undesirable behaviors, unknown to their parents. Recent research points to a different view of adolescence, one of some conflict and identity formation, but not as turbulent or inconsistent with parent understandings as others have depicted (Schneider and Stevenson, 1999). In some families, there appears to be little conflict regarding where and how teenagers are spending their time, although in other families there are serious conflicts and disagreements concerning teenagers' time use. Using data from time diaries and interviews, this paper describes how teenagers spend their time, what parents assume about how their teenagers are spending their time, and what family characteristics, such as parent work schedules, parent work roles, amount of time spent at home, and the quality of experiences in the family as experienced by parents and their teenagers are associated with discordant views of teenage time use. The analyses reveal that parents and their teens agree more often than might be expected about the amount of time spent doing various activities and discussing various topics. The greatest discrepancies in parent-child reporting involve time spent on housework.
00-04
David Shernoff and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
"The Emotional and Affective Development of Adolescents from Working Families"
See Paper 00-21
00-05
Kim Weeden
"Is There a Flexiglass Ceiling? The Impact of Family Friendly Work Schedules on Career Outcomes"
See Paper 01-11
00-06
Kazuo Yamaguchi and Yantao Wang
"Subjective Class Identification of Married Working Women and Men in America"
Using bilinear regression models which parameterize relative weights between own and spouse's status attributes and relative weights among education, occupation, and income, in determining class identification, and making those weights depend on covariates, this paper shows that married working women's and men's class identifications are, on average, consensual in two respects: (1) the relative weights they place among income, education, and occupational prestige, in this order of importance, are the same, and (2) both women and men derive their subjective class from the sum of the husband's and the wife's income and from the husband's, but not the wife's occupation. Men and women are not consensual, however, regarding the derivation of class from education because they both weight their own education more than the spouse's education, thereby revealing a more individualized basis of class identification. The characteristics of population heterogeneity in weights also differ between women and men. Self-employed women have a higher weight of own status attributes relative to their spouses'. Black women weight their spouse's occupation more and their spouse's education less compared with nonblack women. Men increase the weight of income and decrease the weight of education as they age.
00-07
Charles E. Bidwell, Larry V. Hedges, and Julia Gwynne
"Family, School, and the Formation of Adolescents' Scientific and Technical Career Aspirations"
This paper uses longitudinal data from a national sample of U.S. public high school students, their parents, and their mathematics and science teachers. It explores processes in the family and school through which adolescents' aspirations for scientific and technical careers emerge and change. Particular attention is given to ways these processes are affected by patterns of parental employment in scientific, technical, and other occupations. The authors find that students whose interest in math and science continues over time are more likely to have experienced pressure from their parents to study these subjects and to be more positively oriented toward them. Male students are more likely to persist in an interest in mathematics and science than females. Nonhispanic white students are more likely to persist in this interest than other racial and ethnic groups. Family participation in informal science-related activities appears to have little effect on a persistent interest in mathematics and science occupations.
00-08
Lisa Hoogstra
"Learning About Work: The Family's Role in Adolescent Career Development"
See Paper 00-19
00-09
Pamela B. Zuker
"Quality of Experience Among Working Families"
This study looks at the quality of interaction of married couples with adolescent children, using data from the 500 Family Study. Questionnaires (including Marital Satisfaction Scales), interviews, and the Experience Sampling Method are employed. Three questions are posed: (1) How do working couples experience their time alone together?; (2) What contributes to marital satisfaction?; and (3) Is being alone with a spouse conducive to a sense of engagement? Preliminary analyses indicate that among married men and women, the time spent with spouse is an affectively negative experience that is not perceived as particularly engaging. This finding is due, at least in part, to the routine types of activities spouses commonly engage in together. Gender differences are also examined, and while in general women report feeling more "caring" toward others than men do, men were found to report significantly higher levels of caring than women when with their spouse.
00-10
Emma K. Adam
"Work, Family, and Physiological Stress in Mothers: Implications for Health"
In a sample of middle-class, married mothers with toddlers, self-report indicators of maternal distress and an indicator of physiological stress are predicted from maternal personality characteristics (interpersonal relationship style) and from the structure of their work and home responsibilities (hours of paid work and division of childrearing labor).
Mothers who are judged in a structured interview to have a more secure relationship style report significantly fewer symptoms of anxiety, and also report greater satisfaction in their marital relationships. Mothers who are responsible for a disproportionate amount of childrearing responsibility (compared to their husbands) report significantly higher levels of depression and parenting stress. This effect, however, is moderated by the level of mother's participation in paid work. While their number of hours of paid work is not directly related to maternal outcomes, the links between percent childrearing responsibility and maternal distress indicators are strongest within the group of mothers who work full-time.
In a unique approach to measuring physiological stress in working mothers, hierarchical linear modeling techniques were used to model the patterning of each mother's daily stress hormone (cortisol) activity (at Level 1), and to predict each mother's stress hormone pattern from their individual personality and work characteristics (at Level 2). Mothers with secure interpersonal relationship styles had significantly stronger daily stress-hormone patterns (considered a sign of healthy physiological stress-system activity), while mothers who spend a greater number of hours at paid work (especially those who work full-time) had weaker daily stress-hormone rhythms.
This result suggests that the use of diverse methodologies for the assessment of maternal well-being and measurement of both structural aspects of mother's work and home situations and the individual personality characteristics they bring to those situations will contribute to a better understanding of the functioning of mothers attempting to balance the demands of work and family life.
00-11
Susan Lambert
"The Conditions Under Which Workplace Supports Contribute to Personal and Work-Related Well-Being"
This study develops and assesses competing hypotheses of how formal and informal supports in the workplace may interact with basic occupational conditions in explaining personal and work-related well-being. Data come from the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce. Analyses focus on men and women workers in dual-earner households. For the most part, occupational conditions and workplace supports make independent contributions in explaining both personal and work-related well-being. Significant interactions suggest, however, that workplace supports can help compensate for the potentially deleterious effects of limited job autonomy and high job stress on well-being and can augment the positive effects of challenging work. Few gender differences were found.
00-12
James Roney, Rustin Wolfe, and Casey Mulligan
"Methodological Issues in the Use of the ESM to Examine Working Families"
This paper proposes a means of ensuring the interpretive validity of data gathered by the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). First, the paper describes two follow-up studies currently being conducted with a subsample of the 500 Family Study. Results show how the use of person-level standardized scores is heavily dependent on the number of responses. A mathematical adjustment to the standardized scores is proposed to correct for the interpretative distortions.
00-13
Qin Chen and Ye Luo
"What Matters More, Jobs or Children? A Study of Time Use and Experience of Happiness Among Dual Earners"
In this study, we examine how employment and family demands are associated with mothers' and fathers' experience of happiness, using data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households. The results show that the time and quality of parent-child interactions significantly contributes to both parents' happiness. Both parents are happier when they can more often share time with their children in leisure activities, helping them with reading and doing homework, and having meals with them. However, only for mothers, we found a negative effect of the amount of employment time on parent-child shared time and on mother's happiness. The findings on other employment and family characteristics only partially support the suggestion that women are more affected by their family characteristics and men are more strongly affected by their employment characteristics. Thus, consistent with past research, our study reveals a persistent gendered division of labor within and outside the home, although we do see signs of change.
00-14
Yun-Suk Lee, Linda J. Waite, and Ross M. Stolzenberg
"Housework as Caring: Exploring Women's Attitudes about Housework"
Using the NSFH 87-88, this paper examines married and cohabiting males' and females' feelings of being appreciated for housework. The authors conceptualize housework as both "burden" and "caring"' and estimate ordered logistic regressions separately for (1) men, (2) employed women and (3) non-employed women. Preliminary findings show first that feelings of being appreciated are affected by time spent with spouse/partner for both males and females. Second, the number of hours spent on housework decreases feelings of being appreciated for men only, and this effect is moderated by time spent with spouse or partner. The number of housework hours does not affect appreciation for females. Third, whether spouses or partners perceive that they have alternatives to the current union decreases feelings of appreciation for both males and females, and this effect is moderated by time spent with spouse or partner for males. Fourth, more liberal gender role attitudes increase men's feelings of being appreciated and decrease them for employed women, for whom the effect is moderated by time spent with spouse or partner. The paper concludes that the quality of the relationship between spouses is important in shaping attitudes about housework and is an important element to consider for research on time spent on housework and sense of fairness. This research has, in addition, significant implications for rapidly increasing numbers of dual-earner families.
00-15
Barbara H. Wimsatt
"Evolution in Family Structure and the Persistence of Tradition: A Study of Work, Family, and Social/Emotional Support in Ten Medical Families"
This paper examines and illustrates the importance of (socially and emotionally) supportive relationships and interactions both within and external to families from which they draw sustenance as well as logistical assistance. The paper uses kindred concepts which can be loosely grouped under the rubric of sociality--that is, the stability through (historical) time of patterns of interactions among human groups. Related concepts appear in the search for evolutionary fitness conferred by altruism, and the healthy development of humans through infant-maternal bonding attachment.
Ten physicians were initially interviewed for this study in 1990, and as the ten-year mark approached, were re-interviewed. A number of people made or contemplated career shifts, sometimes involving family arrangements. For some, it was a time for reassessing priorities and downscaling career goals, and for others it was a time to shift into overdrive--their next career level. Two physicians, one man and one woman, decided to cut back on research goals because of various stresses related to pursuing them; at the same time, three other male physicians were gearing up to take on new challenges as heads of programs or in jobs with more career potential. And the woman who cut back on research was also taking on a new career challenge. Two women professionals (one physician), who had interrupted their careers while their children were in preschool were resuming them. A male whose career was interrupted because of his wife's career move had returned to work.
All of these changes were seen as positive by the individuals making them, but some of them may have exacted a cost from family members. One aspect of the most highly demanding careers was work that spilled over the boundaries of the workday in long hours and/or work carried home; so that even when people were home, they were virtually still at work. However, most individuals working excessively long hours tried to compensate for their time away by spending "quality time" with their families on weekends whenever possible.
00-16
Rachel A. Gordon and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale
"Availability of Child Care in the United States: A Description and Analysis of Data Sources"
Lack of high quality, affordable child care is an often cited impediment to a manageable work-family balance. However, researchers have been restricted by the lack of data about the availability of child care in communities. In this paper, we layout a conceptual framework regarding the importance of child care availability in a community, considering potential variation based on the urbanicity of the area and the economic resources of its residents. We then describe and evaluate several indicators of child care availability that have been released by the U.S. Census Bureau over the last 15 years. Using community and individual-level analyses, we find that these data sources are useful for indicating child care availability within communities even though they were collected for other purposes. Furthermore, our results generally suggest that the child care availability data are equally valid across communities of different urbanicity and average income levels, although it appears that larger geographic areas better capture the child care market of centers than family day care providers. We discuss the data sources' benefits and limitations, and point to directions for future data developments and research.
00-17
Rachel A. Gordon, Courtenay Savage, Benjamin B. Lahey, Sherryl H. Goodman, Peter Jensen, Maritza Rubio-Stipec, and Christina Hoven
"Economic Resources in the Family and Neighborhood: Additive and Multiplicative Associations with Youths' Well-Being"
Lack of high quality, affordable child care is an often cited impediment to a manageable work-family balance. However, researchers have been restricted by the lack of data about the availability of child care in communities. In this paper, we lay out a conceptual framework regarding the importance of child care availability in a community, considering potential variation based on the urbanicity of the area and the economic resources of its residents. We then describe and evaluate several indicators of child care availability that have been released by the U.S. Census Bureau over the last 15 years. Using community and individual-level analyses, we find that these data sources are useful for indicating child care availability within communities even though they were collected for other purposes. Furthermore, our results generally suggest that the child care availability data are equally valid across communities of different urbanicity and average income levels, although it appears that larger geographic areas better capture the child care market of centers than family day care providers. We discuss the data sources' benefits and limitations, and point to directions for future data developments and research.
00-18
Casey B. Mulligan, Barbara Schneider, and Rustin Wolfe
"Time Use and Population Representation in the Sloan Study of Adolescents"
This paper examines the characteristics of the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) adolescent sample from the Alfred P. Sloan Study of Youth and Social Development. In particular, the Sloan ESM adolescent sample is compared with other adolescent data drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988-94 (NELS: 88-94), and other large scale studies where the sampling procedures are specifically designed to represent the general adolescent population and the parameters of these sampling estimates are robust. Results show the Sloan ESM sample to be representative of general populations in many, but not all dimensions. The sample is nearly representative in terms of teen employment rates, parental employment rates, and a student's grade point average. Work hours are slightly undercounted in the study because of slightly higher nonresponse rates by teenagers working long hours. The sample is much less representative in terms of the time of the week; nonresponse is relatively common on school nights and, to a lesser extent, on weekends. Sloan ESM data is less than seasonally representative, with more observations in April, May, and October. However, the Sloan sample includes a significant number of observations for all nine of the academic months of the year and is, therefore, more seasonally representative than a number of other studies of adolescents. These results can be used to construct a set of weights which analysts might use to estimate statistics for the general adolescent population.
00-19
Lisa Hoogstra
"Divergent Paths After High School: Predictors of Postsecondary Attendance and Success"
This paper develops case studies of six families--three that are actively involved in providing their adolescents with work-related opportunities, and three that do little to help their children explore or develop their career interests. Data come from a study of working families being conducted by the Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work. Preliminary analyses suggest that parents' enjoyment of work plays a significant role in the frequency with which they discuss their adolescent's career plans, and their own jobs or careers, with their teenage children. Teenagers in families with higher than average rates of career discussion also appear to be more actively engaged in exploring potential career paths.
00-20
Jennifer A. Schmidt
"Overcoming Challenges at Home and in School"
This study examines the association between engagement in daily challenges and school misconduct in a sample of adolescents. Engagement is assessed by the amount of time spent in challenging activities and in terms of subjective ratings of success in daily challenges. Analyses employ data from a study in which adolescents provided self-reports of their immediate experience over the course of one week in response to signals generated at random times by alarm wristwatches. Analyses also test whether the number of opportunities for engagement in school activities is associated with misconduct. Because adolescents who face substantial adversity at home or at school are at particular risk for increased misconduct, associations are tested separately for high- and low-adversity adolescents. Extracurricular opportunities were shown to be associated with reductions in misconduct for high- but not low-adversity adolescents. Among high-adversity adolescents, opportunities for engagement and perceived success in daily challenge were not only associated with reduced misconduct in cross-sectional analyses but also were predictive of reductions in misconduct over time.
00-21
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and David Shernoff
"Comparing Experiences and Attitudes of School and Family Across Socioeconomic Class"
Using Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's ESM methodology from the Sloan Study of Youth and Social Development (SSYSD), this study investigates the quality of experience of adolescents from different family backgrounds while at home, at school, and in the community. The study involved adolescents from thirteen communities in varying socioeconomic classes who were in 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grades. Results revealed that adolescents from low-income backgrounds spent less time in many school activities than other students, but reported higher enjoyment, affect, self-esteem, and engagement when doing them. The opposite was true for many home and passive leisure activities.
00-22
Nicholas P. Dempsey
"The Functions of Television and Other Media in Family Life"
See Paper 02-10
00-23
Ross M. Stolzenberg
"It's About Time and Gender: The Effect of Wife's and Husband's Employment on Their Own and Each Other's Health"
See Paper 01-30
00-24
Qin Chen
"Family Time and Experience of Happiness Among Adolescents: Effects of Interpersonal Processes and Structural Resources of the Family"
00-25
Yun-Suk Lee and Linda J. Waite
"Money and Children's Responsibility for Housework"
See Paper 02-08
00-26
Yun-Suk Lee, Barbara Schneider, and Linda J. Waite
"Determinants and Social and Educational Consequences of Children's Housework"
Over the last several decades, the number of dual-earner and single-parent households has increased in the U.S. But mothers still carry the overwhelming burden of household labor and the amount of time children spend on housework has increased. Several scholars have raised concerns over the benefits and liabilities of having children spend significant amounts of time on household chores, especially ones traditionally undertaken by adults. This paper reviews the research examining how much time children actually spend on housework, whether recent demographic changes are related to differences in the amount of time children spend on chores, and how participation in housework influences children's social and cognitive development. The paper concludes with some academic and practical implications for children's involvement in household labor.
00-27
Ariel Kalil
"Adolescent Development and Transition to Adulthood for Black Middle Class Youth"
See Paper 02-02
00-28
Mary Ellen Carroll
"Educational Commitment: What Parents Have to Say"
1999
99-00
Pamela Zuker
"Working Managers: The Quality of Marital Interaction"<
This study will look at the quality of marital interaction of approximately 250 married couples with adolescent or kindergarten-aged children. Data will be taken from the Sloan 500 Family Study. Data from the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), questionnaires (including Marital Satisfaction Scales), and interviews will be analyzed. Three questions are posed in this proposal: 1) "How do working couples experience their time alone together?"; 2) "What contributes to marital satisfaction?"; and 3) "Under what conditions is being alone with a spouse conducive to flow?" The experience Sampling Method provides a unique opportunity to examine the lives of marriages in depth. Previous ESM studies have concluded that the time spouses spend together is marked by positive mood and can be described as a high quality of experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Larson & Richards, 1994). It is hypothesized that the previous findings will be replicated. Additionally, this study seeks to gain insights into the factors that contribute to marital satisfaction. Finally, with a modification of the variables that identify flow, this study is positioned to report preliminary findings about flow in marriage.
99-01
Linda Waite and Mark R. Nielsen
"The Rise of the Dual Career Family: 1963-1997"
The rise of the dual-career family is a prime candidate to be the most dramatic, far-reaching change affecting women, men, and families over the last 35 years. In the early 1960s, two-thirds of married couples with children had only one earner; in 1997 two-thirds had two earners. In the early 1960s, less than a quarter of married women with children were working full-time. By 1997, that number had risen to 42.
As a result of the shift of married women out of the home and into paid employment their families saw a substantial rise in their level of financial well-being; the household incomes of married women rose faster over the last thirty-five years than incomes of single women with or without children, even after taking into account the size and composition of the family. Women in dual-earner families gained ground, therefore, compared to both unmarried women or women in single-earner families.
Women today are more likely than their mothers to have careers rather than jobs. This shift toward the career model has meant that fewer women leave the work force for an extended period when they have young children. Today, most employed women who give birth take a relatively short maternity leave and return to work. Since work interruptions when children are young have a sizable negative effect on women's earnings, increased employment by mothers of young children has payoffs in higher family income over the long run.
Wives in dual-earner couples have more education, more training, and more experience than such wives did thirty-five years ago, and they enter different occupations and make more money as a result. This shift of wives into the labor force has boosted the income of dual-worker families. These are different women, with a different outlook and different goals for themselves and their families.
99-02
Qin Chen, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jennifer Schmidt, and Barbara Schneider
"Changes in Emotion During Adolescence"
A central theme in development during adolescence is whether the transition from being a teenager to an adult is achieved through substantial emotional "storm and stress" or whether it is a smooth transition. This study examines change and stability of emotion and influence of family and personal characteristics on the development of emotion during adolescence using the Experience-Sampling Method (Csikszentmihalyi, Larson, & Prescott, 1977; Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984), a method that repeatedly and randomly samples an individual's daily emotional states as they occur. The results show substantial two-year stability of emotion and a general downward shift in the level of emotion, especially during early adolescence. Variation in emotion is also associated with social structure and interpersonal processes within the family, as well as personal characteristics of the individual, including gender and grades in school. The extent of influence of these factors, however, is time-dependent, suggesting interaction between age and personal, social, and biological factors in emotional experience during adolescence.
99-03
Fengbin Chang, Barbara Schneider, and David L. Stevenson
"The Hidden Component of College Choice: Parent Willingness to Support Education"
99-04
Emma K. Adam
"The Effects of Relationship Style, Hours of Paid Work, and Division of Child-Rearing Labor on Emotional and Physiological Stress in Working Mothers"
In a sample of middle-class, married mothers with toddlers, self-report indicators of maternal distress and an indicator of physiological stress are predicted from maternal personality characteristics (interpersonal relationship style) and from the structure of their work and home responsibilities (hours of paid work and division of childrearing labor).
Mothers who are judged in a structured interview to have a more secure relationship style report significantly fewer symptoms of anxiety, and also report greater satisfaction in their marital relationships. Mothers who are responsible for a disproportionate amount of childrearing responsibility (compared to their husbands) report significantly higher levels of depression and parenting stress. This effect, however, is moderated by the level of mother's participation in paid work. While their number of hours of paid work is not directly related to maternal outcomes, the links between percent childrearing responsibility and maternal distress indicators are strongest within the group of mothers who work full-time.
In a unique approach to measuring physiological stress in working mothers, hierarchical linear modeling techniques were used to model the patterning of each mother's daily stress hormone (cortisol) activity (at Level 1), and to predict each mother's stress hormone pattern from their individual personality and work characteristics (at Level 2). Mothers with secure interpersonal relationship styles had significantly stronger daily stress-hormone patterns (considered a sign of healthy physiological stress-system activity), while mothers who spend a greater number of hours at paid work (especially those who work full-time) had weaker daily stress-hormone rhythms.
This result suggests that the use of diverse methodologies for the assessment of maternal well-being and measurement of both structural aspects of mother's work and home situations and the individual personality characteristics they bring to those situations will contribute to a better understanding of the functioning of mothers attempting to balance the demands of work and family life.
99-05
Rachel Gordon and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale
"Women's Participation in Market Work and the Availability of Child Care in the United States"
99-06
Reed W. Larson and David M. Almeida
"Emotional Transmission in the Daily Lives of Families: A New Paradigm for Studying Family Process"
This paper brings together studies that examine the transmission of emotions between family members. All studies employ repeated diary or experience-sampling data to examine daily within-person and within-family variations in emotional experience. Emotional transmission is evaluated by assessing circumstances in which events or emotions in one family member's immediate experience show a consistent, predictive relationship to subsequent emotions or behaviors in another family member. This empirical paradigm is placed within the context of other approaches to research, research methods, and statistical procedures for studying emotional transmission; major findings obtained thus far are discussed. The paper argues that this empirical paradigm provides a promising tool for understanding emotional processes within the daily ecology of family and community life.
99-07
Reed W. Larson, Suman Verma, and Jodi Dworkin
"Fathers' Work and Family Lives in India: Daily Ecology of Time and Emotion"
This research examines the daily organization of time and emotion among middle-class fathers in India. To understand men's behavior as fathers and husbands, it is important to understand the daily and weekly rhythm of their experiences. Fathers' activities in the family occur within and are influenced by the larger organization of time and emotion in their lives. Among American middle-class fathers, employment plays a major role in structuring this rhythm. Their activities as fathers and husbands are structured by their working hours, affected by emotional carryover from their jobs, and shaped by men's desire to use their home time for relaxation and recovery from the stress of their jobs, alternating with recuperative leisure and relaxation at home. As in the U.S., the Indian urban middle-class views fathers as the "primary provider" for the family, and women as bearing primary responsibility for home and children. But the organization of Indian men's daily lives is distinct in many ways, including in the values and attitudes shaping men's jobs, expectations for the father and husband role, and greater involvement of extended kin. This paper evaluates the daily patterns of time and emotion among a sample of Indian middle-class fathers of 8th graders and examines how it is related to their participation in the family. The objective is to elucidate the daily ecology of fatherhood in India, both as an important end in itself and as a means to gain cross-cultural perspective on the organization of men's lives.
99-08
Casey B. Mulligan
"A Comparison of Adult Work Habits of Children from Working and Nonworking Families"
"Work ethic"--as measured by a person's willingness to be unemployed, collect welfare, or work long hours--is transmitted from parents to children. Using data from a survey of families over a twenty year period, this paper shows that a child of parents who do not work and/or do collect government benefits for not working displays a tendency to behave similarly as an adult. Evidence is presented that suggests that the intergenerational correlation is not caused by unmeasured components of family income or by "unobserved heterogeneity." The results suggest that it matters for a child whether or not he or she grew up in a working family. Today's tax and expenditure policies not only affect today's employment of adult family members but also the future employment of their children. The paper also provides some quantitative estimates of the long-term impact of these policies.
99-09
Regina M. Bures
"Family, Health, and Labor Force Status: Married Couples in Later Midlife"
Large portions of middle-class families are dual-worker couples. Compared to couples with only a high school education, middle-class couples are also more likely to own their homes or to have a youngest child at home under age 18. This paper compares dual-career couples with couples where one (or both) of the spouses is not working, examining the differences separately for middle-class and other couples. Using data from the first wave of the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), the paper examines the effect of the age of the youngest child in the home on the employment status of married couples, net of social and health characteristics. Results show that dual-career couples are more likely to have children at home. The exception to this is middle-class "traditional" families, those with a working husband and a wife at home, who are more likely to have either a youngest child under 18 or a youngest child over age 25 at home. These findings are discussed in the context of the costs of children and the impact of the family on labor force transitions in midlife.
99-10
Kazuo Yamaguchi and Yantao Wang
"Gender-Role Attitude, Wives' Employment and the Household Division of Labor Among American Families"
Using data on married women, this paper identifies three latent classes of gender-role attitude in the family, which are called the nontraditionality-compatibility combination, the traditionality-compatibility combination, and the traditionality-incompatibility combination. The distinction between traditionality and nontraditionality reflects a difference in attitude toward the gender division of labor in the household, and the distinction between compatibility and incompatibility reflects a difference in perception about the compatibility between work and family roles for married employed women.
The paper shows that distinguishing among these three latent classes is very informative in revealing (1) qualitative differences in attitude among married women with different employment status, income, and education, and (2) differences among couples in the wife's relative share of household chores compared with the husband's.
99-11
Richard B. Bernard
"Gendering Self-Employment with the Help of the Family: A Middle Class Phenomena"
Using the 1990 U.S. Census 5% of Public Use Micro Sample (PUMS), this paper considers dual-earner couples in the largest 101 cities to determine the effects of couples and spouses characteristics on females' and males' non-farm self-employment status. Qualitative accounts suggest that the family plays a significant role on women's, but not men's, decisions to be self-employed. However, little attempt has been made to systematically determine how a spouse and the presence of a child, net of individual demographic attributes, affects whether one is self-employed. Here, focus is placed on understanding women's self-employment choices. Further, women who work part- and full-time are examined separately to determine how family effects differ by the amount of time a woman devotes to paid work. Females and males are then compared to assess how traditional gender role expectations and behaviors help explain involvement in this form of work. Findings indicate that, in general, women whose husbands provide greater human, financial, and entrepreneurial capital are more likely to be self-employed. In addition, women often use self-employment as a means of juggling their household and parenting responsibilities. However, the number of school-age (6-17) children present in the family only affects women who work full-time, thus suggesting that self-employment may be used differently by part- and full-time women. Finally, results indicate that males' self-employment status is also influenced by their wives' capital and the presence of their children, but these effects are not as significant.
99-12
Casey B. Mulligan, Barbara Schneider, and Rustin Wolfe
"Time Use and Population Representation In the Sloan Study of Adolescents"
This paper proposes a means of ensuring the interpretive validity of data gathered by the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). First, the paper describes two follow-up studies currently being conducted with a subsample of the 500 Family Study. Results show how the use of person-level standardized scores is heavily dependent on the number of responses. A mathematical adjustment to the standardized scores is proposed to correct for the interpretative distortions.
99-13
Charles E. Bidwell
"Power in Families: A Review of the Literature and Sketch of a Theory"
This paper has two objectives. The first is to review the principal approaches, currently in the literature, to the analysis of power relationships in families. To this end, the study begins with classic writers and then considers major directions of subsequent work. The second aim is to consider the implications of this literature for a theory of power in families that can be used in research on families in the contemporary United States and other societies with developed economies. This effort to sketch the dimensions of a new theory of family power remains within the domain of rational choice, but moves in a direction that differs from the current applications of rational choice in exchange to the husband-wife relationship. It views the family, instead, as one of a set of rationally ordered social units, which are actively engaged in sustaining transactions with an environment, as well as actively engaged in production activities of their own.
99-14
Julia Gwynne
"Family and School Effects on Occupational Expectations"
99-15
Ross M. Stolzenberg
"What is the Effect of One Spouse's Employment on the Other Spouse's Health?"
The term "working families" has come to mean families in which the husband and wife both hold paying jobs. Although most families in the United States today are working families, the effects of this activity are not well-understood, in part because there are so many varieties of work, and there are so many different ways in which families can be affected by work. This paper presents the first results of a larger effort to understand the effects of married men's and women's employment on the well-being of their families. The basic strategy is to begin with simple concepts, apply the most rigorous statistical methods available, and then to move systematically and incrementally to more complicated concepts and correspondingly more complex models and methods. At this first stage, the paper focuses on the physical health of husbands and wives, and the hours of work that they supply to the labor market. Subsequent analyses will include more characteristics of employment, more family members, especially children, and more dimensions of well-being. Although past research leads one to expect to find that a wife's employment is deleterious to her husband's health, results show that a wife's employment of 40 or less hours per week does not adversely affect her husband's health over a three-year period. However, wife's employment of more than 40 hours per week does have a substantial negative effect on her husband's health over that same three-year time span.
99-16
Barbara Schneider and Sami Abuhamdeh
"The Importance of Being Alone: Mothers and Identity Formation"
As part of a larger goal of understanding how "quality time" is defined within the family, how it is allocated, and how it can be examined empirically using qualitative and quantitative data, this paper examines how mothers, fathers, and children feel when they are in different contexts, and which contexts seem to be the most productive for the individuals as well as the family. The data suggest that these times may be different for different family members, and the frequency with which they occur may depend on a number of inherent stresses in the family and the workplace. In addition, some time-out activities appear to be more beneficial than others.
When looking specifically at working mothers, preliminary results support the idea that working mothers need a certain amount of time out, and that, when they take this time out, they feel better about themselves. From these results, it appears that when choosing to spend their time as they please, mothers have legitimated freedom. This freedom from work and family seems to make mothers feel more in control and happier with their lives. It may be that during this time working mothers are reasserting their identities as women, independent of other roles they assume on a routine basis. Without such an identity, it may be that women are less clear about their senses of self, which may lead to self-doubt, anxiety, and depression.
99-17
Linda J. Waite and Mark R. Nielsen
"The Decision to Allocate Time Between Market and Non-Market Activities"
To work or not to work. What a choice. Of course, it's not so simple. And we would like to argue that we need to look at a bigger picture than just the choice by an individual to allocate some number of hours to paid employment and some to other types of "work." We argue that scholars and policymakers need to consider a larger unit than just the individual, a broader range of unpaid activities than just non-market "work", and a longer time frame than just the present. We also argue that researchers and policymakers need to consider both people's behavior and their preferences on these dimensions.
99-18
Barbara Wimsatt
"Evolution in Family Structure and the Persistence of Tradition: A Study of Work, Family, and the Social/Emotional Support in Ten Medical Families"
This paper examines and illustrates the importance of (socially and emotionally) supportive relationships and interactions both within and external to families from which they draw sustenance as well as logistical assistance. The paper uses kindred concepts which can be loosely grouped under the rubric of sociality--that is, the stability through (historical) time of patterns of interactions among human groups. Related concepts appear in the search for evolutionary fitness conferred by altruism, and the healthy development of humans through infant-maternal bonding attachment.
Ten physicians were initially interviewed for this study in 1990, and as the ten-year mark approached, were re-interviewed. A number of people made or contemplated career shifts, sometimes involving family arrangements. For some, it was a time for reassessing priorities and downscaling career goals, and for others it was a time to shift into overdrive--their next career level. Two physicians, one man and one woman, decided to cut back on research goals because of various stresses related to pursuing them; at the same time, three other male physicians were gearing up to take on new challenges as heads of programs or in jobs with more career potential. And the woman who cut back on research was also taking on a new career challenge. Two women professionals (one physician), who had interrupted their careers while their children were in preschool were resuming them. A male whose career was interrupted because of his wife's career move had returned to work.
All of these changes were seen as positive by the individuals making them, but some of them may have exacted a cost from family members. One aspect of the most highly demanding careers was work that spilled over the boundaries of the workday in long hours and/or work carried home; so that even when people were home, they were virtually still at work. However, most individuals working excessively long hours tried to compensate for their time away by spending "quality time" with their families on weekends whenever possible.
99-19
Linda J. Waite
"The Family as a Social Organization: Key Ideas for the 21st Century"
This essay offers suggestions for a research agenda for studying families in the 21st century. First, the key functions of the family are outlined and the major changes in its form and structure over the last fifty years are described. Next, it is argued that sociologists can and should evaluate organizations, including the family, by assessing their output. Then, an example is presented from the author's work on marriage as a social institution. Some important institutional constraints on families as organizations are discussed, and it is finally argued that social scientists should be, consciously, social activists in disseminating the implications of their research to the rest of the world.
99-20
Kevin Rathunde
"Family Context and the Development of Undivided Interest: A Longitudinal Study of Family Support and Challenge and Adolescents' Quality of Experience"
99-21
Sunny Chang
"Family Time: Quantity and Quality of Parent-Adolescent Interactions and the Influence of 'Cheong'"
99-22
Sarah Crane
"Adolescents' Time After School: Solitude and its Implications"
99-23
Joelle Gruber
"Balancing Paid Work and Children: Perceptions of Undergraduates and Alumnae"
99-24
Qin Chen, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, A. Meek, and Barbara Schneider
"Measuring Subjective Experience: Reliability and Validity of the Experience Sampling Method"
99-25
Rachel Gordon
"Economic Resources in the Family and Neighborhood: Additive and Multiplicative Associations with Youths' Academic Performance and Socioemotional Well-Being"
99-26
Julia Gwynne
"The Effects of Parents' Occupational Experiences on Children's Occupational Goals and Preparation"
99-27
Elaine Marchena
"Urbanization and Kinship: A Comparison of Nations"
Sociological theories of urbanism suggest that increased population size leads to the disintegration of social and kinship ties. Based on these theories, one would hypothesize that individuals from urban-like areas are less likely to have large social networks and less likely to have kin at the center of those networks. To test the second of these hypotheses, I use the 1986 module on Social Networks and Support Systems of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), which contains detailed behavioral reports on individuals' contacts with friends and relatives, and questions dealing with individuals' sources of help in times of illness and emotional need. Data from six countries: Australia (N=1,250); Germany (N=2,809); Italy (N=1,027); United States (N=1,470); Austria (N=1,027) and Hungary (N=1,747) were analyzed. Results from logistic regression indicate that population size has a negative effect on the likelihood of kin-centered support networks in Italy, Austria, and Hungary, although results suggest that these vary according to the type of support required.
99-28
Elaine Marchena and Linda J. Waite
"Racial and Ethnic Differences in Marriage and Childbearing Attitudes"
Although race and ethnic differences in family formation attitudes have been found among adults, we know less about the divergence in the family values of adolescents. We examine marriage and childbearing values, and attitudes about the appropriate contexts for sexual and reproductive activities among white, black, and Mexican-American adolescents. Drawing on socialization theory, we develop hypotheses about the role of family and community, and test them using data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988. A joint estimation of attitudes reveals that white, black and Mexican-American adolescents are more alike in their marriage and childbearing values than they are in their attitudes about premarital sex and non marital childbearing. While family and community characteristics account for race/ethnic differences in marriage and childbearing values, they do not explain race/ethnic differences in sex and non-marital childbearing attitudes.
99-29
Jennifer Schmidt
"Family Time: Quantity and Quality of Parent-Adolescent Interactions in Two-Parent Working Families"
This paper investigates the types of activities that adolescents from two-parent middle class families engage in with their parents and the adolescents' subjective experience of these activities. Data collected by the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), surveys, and in-depth interviews suggests that adolescents spend less time with parents than they spend alone or in the company of friends. A significant portion of the time children and parents spend together is focused on activities that require little or no participation between participants. Family time allocation differs based on demographic characteristics such as gender and race/ethnicity, and parent-child interactions vary based on the age of the adolescent. In terms of quality of time spent together, negative experiences are often a function of the particular activities involved. Activities viewed by adolescents as unenjoyable, unengaging, and unimportant, such as chores, are the most frequent, while the most enjoyable and engaging family activities, such as family outings and conversations with parents, are the most frequent.
99-30
Jennifer Schmidt
"Adversity in Middle Class Families: An Overlooked Phenomenon"
This study examines the association between engagement in daily challenges and school misconduct in a sample of adolescents. Engagement is assessed by the amount of time spent in challenging activities and in terms of subjective ratings of success in daily challenges. Analyses employ data from a study in which adolescents provided self-reports of their immediate experience over the course of one week in response to signals generated at random times by alarm wristwatches. Analyses also test whether the number of opportunities for engagement in school activities is associated with misconduct. Because adolescents who face substantial adversity at home or at school are at particular risk for increased misconduct, associations are tested separately for high- and low-adversity adolescents. Extracurricular opportunities were shown to be associated with reductions in misconduct for high- but not low-adversity adolescents. Among high-adversity adolescents, opportunities for engagement and perceived success in daily challenge were not only associated with reduced misconduct in cross-sectional analyses but also were predictive of reductions in misconduct over time.
99-31
David Shernoff and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
"The Experience of Home and School for Working Class, Middle, and Upper Class Students"