Poster Session on Marriage and union formation, families and households (2)

Marriage is an important social institution associated with the transition into adulthood and childbearing in many societies. Childbearing and marriage are inseparable yet, particularly in East Asia, and aging of childbearing is closely related to the postponement of marriage in this area. A body of literature suggests that women’s educational attainment plays an important role in the timing of first marriage and marriage rate. Despite widespread interest in low fertility, research on the postponement and recuperation of first marriage in low fertility context remains unexplored. The sustained increase in age at first marriage without much change in the proportion of never-married among older women implies that considerable proportion of delayed marriage is recuperated later in East Asia. With a series of Korean Census samples data, this study investigates the postponement and recuperation of first marriage in South Korea, one of the lowest-low fertility countries, and also examines how it differs across women’s educational levels. The result of this study provides evidence that the pattern of family formation is diverged by women’s educational levels in South Korea.

Traditional family arrangements have become less normative in contemporary society as more children are reared in cohabiting and single-parent families. Extant research has established the negative effects of non-traditional family arrangements on child well-being, but the literature is void of a comprehensive examination of the how family context on indicators of child well-being varies across race. In this study, I will use data from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey to investigate the mediating and moderating influences of race on the relationship between family context and child food insecurity. Preliminary results reveal that approximately 21% of children experience food insecurity, and food insecurity is more prevalent among single parent households and Hispanic children. However, multivariate analyses reveal a more intricate relationship between family context and race. Black children with married parents are the least likely to report food insecurity. White children in single parent and cohabiting families are the most likely to report food insecurity. Among Hispanic children, those living in cohabiting families are the least likely to experience food insecurity, while Hispanic children living in married and single parent families have a similar probability of experiencing food insecurity.

Within the wider concept of intergenerational relations, when intergenerational transmission is strong, children turn out much like their parents and social mobility is low. Such a continuity within the family and between generations in the society is identified as intergenerational attitude congruence. The main question we address in this study is whether congruence of family related attitudes is different in small families as compared to large families (i.e. where there are less or more children). The importance of intergenerational transmission processes might be accentuated in the current climate of low (and lowest-low) fertility in contemporary societies. Other than distinguishing congruence levels in mother-daughter, father-daughter, mother-son and father-son relationships, we investigate on the role of education and religiosity. In this paper, we use a multivariate approach on a large database data, the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS).

This paper aims to investigate whether friends’ and peers’ behaviour influence an individual’s entry into marriage and parenthood during the transition to adulthood of young, U.S. adults. After first studying entry into marriage and parenthood as two independent events, we then examine them as interrelated processes, thereby considering them as two joint outcomes of an individual’s unique, underlying family-formation strategy. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we engage in a series of discrete time event history models to test whether the larger the number of friends and peers who get married (or have a child), the sooner the individual gets married (or has a child). Results show strong cross-friend effects on entry into parenthood, whereas entry into marriage is only affected by peer effects. Estimates of a multiprocess model show that cross-friend effects on entry into parenthood remain strongly significant even when we control for cross-process unobserved heterogeneity.

Violence against women is a major public-health problem throughout the world and a serious violation of fundamental rights. The gender gap in the attitudes towards violence against women is shaped by attitudes towards gender. In India, traditional gender-role attitudes are associated with greater acceptance of violence against women. Therefore, this study attempts to understand the effect of childhood exposure to parental violence on spousal violence against women on men and women separately and also to see differentials in this relationship under different settings. The present study is based on the data of National Family Health Survey of India. Exposure to childhood violence was categorized into different levels depending upon the exposure in either single partner or both the partners. Based on these variables various assessments were made with the help of different statistical tools. Explicitly, findings reflect the impact of childhood exposure to parental violence in shaping conformation to the set gender role norms.Childhood exposures by husband or wife alone also have impact on spousal violence but among them women’s exposure has more significant impact.Given the apparent pervasiveness of the problem of childhood exposure to parental violence in India, remains an important area for social, legal and public policy concern.

This paper analyses children’s likelihood of experiencing stress in shared physical custody settings with shared and alternating residence after parental union dissolution. Living in two different households and alternating not just between two geographical locations but also potentially between two different “parental regimes” with different rules and customs may increase children’s feeling of stress.
We use the Swedish Survey of Living Conditions, a high quality cross-sectional data set with information gathered from the parents as well as the children themselves. The sample for this study includes all children living with a single parent or in a stepfamily setting (n=853).
The tentative results show a surprising pattern with children living in a shared physical custody setting with alternating residence between the households of the mother and the father reporting a markedly lower likelihood of feeling stressed. We also see that girls have much higher likelihood of feeling stressed than boys do.

International research on individual behaviour has shown the importance of the network of relationships that bind the individuals to the people who are close to them.
Mainly in those countries, such as Italy, where the welfare system and the national agencies are weak and unable to suitably support people facing difficulties, the network’s role can be substantial.
For the Italian scenario, the 2003 and 2009 Multipurpose survey, “Famiglia e Soggetti Sociali” (FSS), carried out by ISTAT offers some challenges to measure the ego-centered social support networks of Italian couples along the different phases of family formation.
Focusing on individuals aged between 18 to 44 years old living as couples, our research questions concern:
• the characteristics of partners’ ego-social support networks;
• the types of help couples receive from people outside the immediate family;
• the effect of network typologies on the probability of receiving help in the household life course.
First results show a narrow social support network. Slight differences in partners’ availability of resources also emerge. The couple’s network size or even only the female’s network size has a significant positive effect on the probability of receiving help. Nevertheless, relying on the male social support network reduces this probability.

The Canadian province of Québec, the second most populous, to increase mother’s participation in the labour market and to enhance child development, implemented in 1997 a $5 per day universal childcare policy. Over time, the age requirement for subsidized spaces progressively decreased and the number of subsidized spaces increased. By September 2000, the low-fee policy applied to all children aged 0 to 4. By March 2012, the number of regulated-subsidized paces reached 225,107, a 211 percentage increase over 1997. In 2008 78% of children aged 1 to 4 were in low-fee childcare. The policy has significantly increased the labour force participation and annual weeks worked of mothers. We use Statistics Canada’s annual 1997 to 2009 Survey on households spending to: a) document the raising share of mothers’ income in total income of households in Québec compared to similar families in the other provinces; b) estimate the impact of the policy (treatment and control groups) based on an IV instrumental technique (generalized method of moments) on expenditures items. The results show that more income in the hands of women impacts on the structure of expenditures within the household, raised budget shares on children and collective family goods and services.