Transmitting Advantage: Maternal Education Differences in Parental Investment Activities

Though the stark advantages of children growing up in college-educated families are well documented (e.g. higher levels of school achievement, higher likelihood of completing high school, higher college admission rates), scholars are just beginning to understand how the everyday activities of parents and children are involved in this reproduction of inequality. This study links parental time investments in children to their verbal achievement using data from the 1997 and 2002 waves of the nationally representative Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Supplement. Consistent with existing theoretical frameworks, children of college-educated mothers are read to more often, watch less television, participate more in structured activities, and have mothers who are more involved in their schooling when compared with children of less educated mothers. These investments are also linked to children's verbal aptitude, and the linkages are strongest when children are young. Among preschool-aged children, reading is positively associated, while children's television viewing with parents is negatively associated with children's verbal achievement. By the time children reach school age, however, reading is negatively associated with verbal achievement. At this age, better-educated parents seem more likely than less-educated parents to provide remedial help to their children who may be having difficulty with reading. Also among school-aged children, parental investment in children's schooling and structured activities are positively associated with children's verbal scores. At the same time, there are important ways in which college-educated and less educated mothers do not diverge as much as previous research might suggest. Most notably, once family structure and race are held constant, educational variation in time spent with extended family and visiting others, mothers' daily expressions of warmth and affection, and awareness of children's whereabouts are generally negligible. Finally, individual parental investment measures only marginally explain the positive relationship between maternal education and children's verbal achievement, though they do play a significant role in helping to explain how and why children of college-educated mothers are more likely to have high-achieving children. Other factors, like high levels of income and mothers' verbal ability, seem more advantageous to these children than do the specific parenting activities of college-educated mothers

Gender and time allocation of cohabiting and married women and men in France, Italy, and the United States

Background: Women, who generally do more unpaid and less paid work than men, have greater incentives to stay in marriages than cohabiting unions, which generally carry fewer legal protections for individuals that wish to dissolve their relationship. The extent to which cohabitation is institutionalized, however, is a matter of policy and varies substantially by country. The gender gap in paid and unpaid work between married and cohabiting individuals should be larger in countries where cohabitation is less institutionalized and where those in cohabiting relationships have relatively fewer legal protections should the relationship dissolve, yet few studies have explored this variation. Objective: Using time diary data from France, Italy, and the United States, we assess the time men and women devote to paid and unpaid work in cohabiting and married couples. These three countries provide a useful diversity in marital regimes for examining these expectations: France, where cohabitation is most “marriage like” and where partnerships can be registered and carry legal rights; the United States, where cohabitation is common but is short-lived and unstable and where legal protections vary across states; and Italy, where cohabitation is not common and where such unions are not legally acknowledged and less socially approved than in either France or the United States. Results: Cohabitating men’s and women’s time allocated to market and nonmarket work is generally more similar than married men and women. Our expectations about country differences are only partially borne out by the findings. Greater gender differences in the time allocated to market and nonmarket work are found in Italy relative to either France or the U.S

Demographic change and response: social context and the practice of birth control in six countries

This paper expands on Kingsley Davis’s demographic thesis of change and re- sponse. Specifically, we consider the social context that accounts for the primacy of particular birth control methods that bring about fertility change during specific time periods. We examine the relevance of state policy (including national family planning programs), the international population establishment, the medical profession, organized religion, and women’s groups using case studies from Japan, Russia, Puerto Rico, China, India, and Cameroon. Some of these countries are undergoing the second demographic transition, others the first. Despite variations in context, heavy reliance on sterilization and/or abortion as a means of birth control is a major response in most of these countries. The key roles of the medical profession and state policy are discussed, along with the general lack of influence of religion and of women’s groups in these countries

Gender and time allocation of cohabiting and married women and men in France, Italy, and the United States

International audienceBackground: Women, who generally do more unpaid and less paid work than men, have greater incentives to stay in marriages than cohabiting unions, which generally carry fewer legal protections for individuals that wish to dissolve their relationship. The extent to which cohabitation is institutionalized, however, is a matter of policy and varies substantially by country. The gender gap in paid and unpaid work between married and cohabiting individuals should be larger in countries where cohabitation is less institutionalized and where those in cohabiting relationships have relatively fewer legal protections should the relationship dissolve, yet few studies have explored this variation.Objective: Using time diary data from France, Italy, and the United States, we assess the time men and women devote to paid and unpaid work in cohabiting and married couples. These three countries provide a useful diversity in marital regimes for examining these expectations: France, where cohabitation is most “marriage like” and where partnerships can be registered and carry legal rights; the United States, where cohabitation is common but is short-lived and unstable and where legal protections vary across states; and Italy, where cohabitation is not common and where such unions are not legally acknowledged and less socially approved than in either France or the United States.Results: Cohabitating men’s and women’s time allocated to market and nonmarket work is generally more similar than married men and women. Our expectations about country differences are only partially borne out by the findings. Greater gender differences in the time allocated to market and nonmarket work are found in Italy relative to either France or the U.S