Bridging Alone: Religious Conservatism, Marital Homogamy, and Voluntary Association Membership

This study characterizes social insularity of religiously conservative American married couples by examining patterns of voluntary associationmembership. Constructing a dataset of 3938 marital dyads from the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, the author investigates whether conservative religious homogamy encourages membership in religious voluntary groups and discourages membership in secular voluntary groups. Results indicate that couples’ shared affiliation with conservative denominations, paired with beliefs in biblical authority and inerrancy, increases the likelihood of religious group membership for husbands and wives and reduces the likelihood of secular group membership for wives, but not for husbands. The social insularity of conservative religious groups appears to be reinforced by homogamy—particularly by wives who share faith with husbands

Husband's and wife's culture participation and their levels of education: A case of male-dominance

Contains fulltext : 28411.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)In this study we seek to broaden the debate on women and class analysis to married women’s and men's educational attainment, and its impact on cultural behaviour. Analogous to the earlier discussion, the question is raised whether the husband's education dominates his wife’s behaviour. First, to examine spouses' interdependent cultural behaviour, we apply a simultaneous equation model. Our analysis, based on longitudinal data from Dutch household surveys, shows some evidence of a declining male dominance across cohorts. The findings also suggest that the total effect of the wife's education on her husband’s cultural behaviour has increased over time. Second, we apply diagonal reference models to study educationally mixed couples more elaborately by testing several interaction effects. Although both women’s and men’s relative positions are associated with a differential sahence of the spouse’s education, there is no evidence indicating that the lower educated spouse is primarily 'borrowing' from his or her higher educated partner. Instead of such a 'status maximimization' effect the higher educated spouse adapts more strongly to the lower educated spouse. In particular, women in the oldest cohort seem to be characterized by this 'status minimization'. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed