Changes in sexual identities

Includes a response by Gerald R. Shields. American society is in the early stages of a very dramatic revolution in the world of work and in its relation to the rest of human life. The foundation for this revolution lies in the development of a relatively stabilized, urbanized, industrialized or postindustrial as it is now called middle class population and culture. Its seeds were the movement of the 1960s, which questioned traditional views of the family, or work, and of our whole value system with its strong emphasis on the economic institution. The youth movement may not have directly revolutionized the "establishment," but it did raise some questions. The now-adult participants, as well as the youth of the 1970s, are not as heavily committed to hard work and making money nor to upward mobility as were the immigrants and the following two (or more) generations, which adhered to the Protestant work ethic with its puritanical rigidity and saw obvious rewards in pulling themselves out of the ghetto and into the "good life."published or submitted for publicatio

Support Systems Involving Widows, 1974

This study was undertaken to describe the social and psychological characteristics of widows and identify the support systems available to them in an urban setting. A stratified random sample of 1,169 widows of all ages living in the metropolitan Chicago area was interviewed by the staff of the University of Illinois Survey Research Laboratory in 1974. The structured interview schedule consisted primarily of precoded items. In addition to the usual background and demographic items, questions about the following were included: (1) the utilization of government agencies and programs as well as personal and family resources; (2) the individuals who helped in reestablishing the respondent's life as a widow; (3) prior and current financial and living arrangements, and (4) other issues of particular concern to widows. <br /

Widowhood in an American City, 1968

The general purpose of this study was to collect data which would describe the social and psychological characteristics of widows and identify the support systems available to them in an urban setting. In 1968, the staff of the National Opinion Research Center interviewed 301 Chicago area widows, selected by means of modified area probability sampling, who had not remarried and who were residing in private dwellings. Approximately one-half of the participants in this study were between 50 and 64 years of age when interviewed; the remaining half were 65 or older. The interview schedule consisted primarily of precoded items and included questions concerning the education and employment history of the respondent (both before and after her husband's death), family and community relationships, background and general demographic characteristics, and the social and emotional adjustment to widowhood. The interview also included several open-ended items dealing with general issues of widowhood, such as the possible advantages of widowhood and the ways in which the respondent had changed since the death of her husband