The Gendered Division of Housework and Couples’ Sexual Relationships: A Re-Examination

Contemporary men and women increasingly express preferences for egalitarian unions. One recent high profile study (Kornrich, Brines, & Leupp, 2013) found that married couples with more equal divisions of labor had sex less frequently than couples with conventional divisions of domestic labor. Others (Gager & Yabiku, 2010) found that performing more domestic labor was associated with greater sexual frequency, regardless of gender. Both studies drew from the same data source, which was over two decades old. We utilize data from the 2006 Marital and Relationship Survey (MARS) to update this work. We find no significant differences in sexual frequency and satisfaction among conventional or egalitarian couples. Couples where the male partner does the majority of the housework, however, have less frequent and lower quality sexual relationships than their counterparts. Couples are content to modify conventional housework arrangements, but reversing them entirely has consequences for other aspects of their unions

Social Exchange and the Progression of Sexual Relationships in Emerging Adulthood

Research has extensively examined matching on race and other characteristics in cohabitation and marriage, but it has generally disregarded sexual and romantic relationships. Using data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine the tempo of key transitions in the recent relationships of young adults ages 18-24. We focus on how the racial mix of partners in relationships is associated with the timing of sex, cohabitation and marriage. We find evidence that relationships between white men and minority women proceed more rapidly from romance to sexual involvement and from sexual involvement to cohabitation compared to relationships involving other racial combinations. Our findings have important implications for social exchange perspectives on mate selection

The Effect of Income on Educational Attainment: Evidence from State Earned Income Tax Credit Expansions

As of the early 2000s, the gap in college enrollment between children growing up in the highest income quartile and the lowest income quartile was over 50 percentage points (Bailey and Dynarski 2011). While previous work has analyzed the impact of various federal and state financial aid programs on college enrollment rates among low and moderate-income households, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has largely been overlooked as a potential source of financial aid. As of the 2011 tax year, the maximum federal EITC benefit was nearly $6,000, worth up to 45$1,000, 18-23 year old children growing up in likely EITC-eligible households are 1 percentage point more likely to have ever enrolled in college and 0.3 percentage points more likely to complete a bachelor’s degree

Do Marriage and Cohabitation Provide Benefits to Health in Mid-Life? The role of childhood selection mechanisms and partnership characteristics across countries

Extensive research has found that marriage provides health benefits to individuals, particularly in the U.S. The rise of cohabitation, however, raises questions about whether simply being in an intimate co-residential partnership conveys the same health benefits as marriage. Here, we use OLS regression to compare differences between partnered and unpartnered, and cohabiting and married individuals with respect to self-rated health in mid-life, an understudied part of the lifecourse. We pay particular attention to selection mechanisms arising in childhood and characteristics of the partnership. We compare results in five countries with different social, economic, and policy contexts: the U.S. (NLSY), U.K. (UKHLS), Australia (HILDA), Germany (SOEP), and Norway (GGS). Results show that living with a partner is positively associated with self-rated health in mid-life in all countries, but that controlling for children, prior separation, and current socio-economic status eliminates differences in Germany and Norway. Significant differences between cohabitation and marriage are only evident in the U.S. and the U.K., but controlling for childhood background, union duration, and prior union dissolution eliminates partnership differentials. The findings suggest that cohabitation in the U.S. and U.K., both liberal welfare regimes, seems to be very different than in the other countries. The results challenge the assumption that only marriage is beneficial for health

Fertility, Living Arrangements, Care and Mobility

There are four main interconnecting themes around which the contributions in this book are based. This introductory chapter aims to establish the broad context for the chapters that follow by discussing each of the themes. It does so by setting these themes within the overarching demographic challenge of the twenty-first century – demographic ageing. Each chapter is introduced in the context of the specific theme to which it primarily relates and there is a summary of the data sets used by the contributors to illustrate the wide range of cross-sectional and longitudinal data analysed

Tissue eosinophilia: a morphologic marker for assessing stromal invasion in laryngeal squamous neoplasms

BACKGROUND: The assessment of tumor invasion of underlying benign stroma in neoplastic squamous proliferation of the larynx may pose a diagnostic challenge, particularly in small biopsy specimens that are frequently tangentially sectioned. We studied whether thresholds of an eosinophilic response to laryngeal squamous neoplasms provides an adjunctive histologic criterion for determining the presence of invasion. METHODS: Eighty-seven(n = 87) cases of invasive squamous cell carcinoma and preinvasive squamous neoplasia were evaluated. In each case, the number of eosinophils per high power field(eosinophils/hpf), and per 10 hpf in the tissue adjacent to the neoplastic epithelium, were counted and tabulated. For statistical purposes, the elevated eosinophils were defined and categorized as: focally and moderately elevated (5–9 eos/hpf), focally and markedly increased(>10/hpf), diffusely and moderately elevated(5–19 eos/10hpf), and diffusely and markedly increased (>20/10hpf). RESULTS: In the invasive carcinoma, eosinophil counts were elevated focally and /or diffusely, more frequently seen than in non-invasive neoplastic lesions. The increased eosinophil counts, specifically >10hpf, and >20/10hpf, were all statistically significantly associated with stromal invasion. Greater than 10 eosinophils/hpf and/or >20 eosinophils/10hpf had highest predictive power, with a sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value of 82%, 93%, 96% and 80%, 100% and 100%, respectively. Virtually, greater than 20 eosinophils/10 hpf was diagnostic for tumor invasion in our series. CONCLUSION: Our study suggests for the first time that the elevated eosinophil count in squamous neoplasia of the larynx is a morphologic feature associated with tumor invasion. When the number of infiltrating eosinophils exceeds 10/hpf and or >20/10 hpf in a laryngeal biopsy with squamous neoplasia, it represents an indicator for the possibility of tumor invasion. Similarly, the presence of eosinophils meeting these thresholds in an excisional specimen should prompt a thorough evaluation for invasiveness, when evidence of invasion is absent, or when invasion is suspected by conventional criteria in the initial sections

The ideal job-seeker norm: unemployment and marital privileges in the professional middle-class

Objective: To understand how heterosexual US married parents interpret and respond to a spouse's unemployment and subsequent job-searching. Background: The pervasiveness of employment uncertainty, and unemployment, may propel families to embrace gender egalitarian norms. Quantitative research finds that this possibility is not borne out. Qualitative research has sought to illuminate mechanisms as to how gender norms persist even during a time that is optimal for dismantling them, but these mechanisms remain unclear. Method: Seventy-two in-depth interviews were conducted with a nonrandom sample of heterosexual, professional, dual-earner, married, unemployed women, men, and their spouses in the United States. Follow-up interviews were conducted with 35 participants. Intensive family observations were conducted with four families, two of unemployed men, and two of unemployed women. Results: Unemployed women, men, and spouses acknowledge that a set of time-intensive activities are key for reemployment (the ideal job-seeker norm). Couples with unemployed men direct resources such as time, space, and even money to facilitate unemployed men's compliance with the ideal job-seeker norm. Couples downplay the importance of women's reemployment and do not direct similar resources to help unemployed women job-search. Conclusion: Couples preserve a traditional gender status quo, often in defiance of material realities, by actively maintaining men's position at the helm of paid work and women's at unpaid work. Implications: Linking unemployment and job-seeking with the institution of heterosexual marriage reveals novel insights into social and marital processes shaping job-seeking