Changing Gender Norms and Marriage Dynamics in the United States

Gender Equality for Whom? The Changing College Education Gradients of the Division of Paid Work and Housework Among US Couples, 1968-2019

In response to women's changing roles in labor markets, couples have adopted varied strategies to reconcile career and family needs. Yet, most studies on the gendered division of labor focus almost exclusively on changes either in work or family domain. Doing so neglects the process through which couples negotiate and contest traditional work and family responsibilities. Studies that do examine these tradeoffs have highlighted how work-family strategies range far beyond simple traditional-egalitarian dichotomies but are limited to specific points in time or population subgroups. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and latent-class analysis, this article provides the first population-based estimates of the couple-level tradeoffs inherent in work-family strategies in the United States, documents trends in the share of couples who fall into each of these strategies, and considers social stratification by gender and college education in these trends. Specifically, I identify seven distinct work-family strategies (traditional, neotraditional, her-second-shift, egalitarian, his-second-shift, female-breadwinner, and neither-full-time couples). Egalitarian couples experienced the fastest increase in prevalence among college-educated couples, whereas couples that lacked two full-time earners increased among less-educated couples. Still, about a quarter of all couples adopted "her-second-shift" strategies, with no variation across time, making it the modal work-family strategy among dual-earner couples. The long-run, couple-level results support the view that the gender revolution has stalled and suggest that this stall may be caused partly by strong traditional gender preferences, whereas structural resources appear to facilitate gender equality among a selected few.

The Development of a Measure Assessing U.S. Adults' Motives for Marriage

Despite the existing literature assessing various aspects of marriage, there is a lack of understanding of adults' motives for pursuing marriage. Thus, this research advanced the literature by assessing adults' motives for marriage via four novel studies in which the Motives for Marriage Scale (MMS) was developed, refined, and validated. In study one, semi-structured focus groups were conducted to capture the range of motives for marriage. In study two, the factor structure of the MMS was assessed. The factor structure was then validated and the psychometric properties were established in study three. Finally, the temporal consistency of the scale was established in study four. The results confirmed that adults' marital motives are complex and that they are best conceptualized using Social Determination Theory (i.e., intrinsic, extrinsic, and instrumental motives). Investigation of the psychometric properties demonstrated the MMS to be reliable and valid. Implications for investigators and practitioners are discussed.

Cohabiting couple's economic organization and marriage patterns across social classes

Objective

Empirically examine whether different economic theories of marriage formation predict the transition from cohabitation to marriage differently across social classes.

Background

Less-educated individuals marry their cohabiting partners at lower rates than their college-educated peers, but the reasons for this are unknown. Few studies have examined the intersection of social class and couple-level economic resources to understand if the potentially gendered economic determinants of marriage vary according to a couple's social location.

Method

Couple-month data come from the 2014 Survey of Income and Program Participation, including 1,879 cohabiting couples, 478 of whom transition to marriage. Logistic regression is used to test whether the marriage bar, gender specialization, gendered institutions, or gender revolution framework best predicts the likelihood of marrying.

Results

Joint indicators of the marriage bar and the gendered economic organization of couples both predict marriage, but the specific gendered organization varies by the couple's level of education. Among couples where neither partner has a college degree, male-breadwinning couples are most likely to marry; dual-earning couples are most likely to marry among more-educated couples.

Conclusion

Although college-educated couples seem to have shifted to a more egalitarian model of marriage, as predicted by the gender revolution framework, the marriages of the less-educated are still characterized by traditional arrangements, in line with the idea that marriage is a gendered institution. By showing that different theories predict marriage depending on the couple's social position, these findings provide groundwork to explore why the less educated are increasingly less likely to marry their cohabiting partners.

The role of motherhood schemas and life transitions in reproductive intention formation

OBJECTIVE

This study provides a theory-based snapshot of the processes involved in women's fertility intention formation and decisions regarding the timing of motherhood.

BACKGROUND

The trend to defer childbearing is linked with both empowering and challenging outcomes for women. The cognitive-social (C-S) model suggests that deliberative thinking regarding reproduction occurs following fertility-relevant life transitions, which results in fluctuations in motherhood schemas and fertility intentions. This framework was applied to explore fertility intention formation.

METHODS

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve women who either had children or desired children.

RESULTS

Two overarching themes central to the C-S model are discussed: (a) passive expectations and (b) deliberative intentions. Women's motherhood schemas were often underpinned by schematic structures (e.g. group norms and scripts) and material structures (e.g. observational influences). Life transitions and personal experiences tended to prompt deliberative thinking about motherhood plans.

CONCLUSION

The results were generally consistent with the C-S model, but highlight complexities to consider when investigating fertility expectations and intentions.

“The Impact of Demographic Change on Transfers of Care and Associated Well-being”

This study aims to evaluate the impact of demographic change on long-term, macro-level childcare and adult care transfers, accounting for the associated well-being effects of informal caregiving. We measure the impact of demographic change on non-monetary care exchanged between different groups by estimating matrices of time transfers by age and sex, and weighting the time flows by self-reported indicators of well-being, for activities related to childcare and adult care. The analysis employs cross-sectional data from the American Time Use Survey 2011–2013, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Disability, and Use of Time Module 2013 to produce the estimates of well-being associated with the two forms of care and their future projections. Both men and women experience more positive feelings when caring for children than when caring for adults. As a whole, caregiving is an overwhelmingly more positive experience than it is negative across both genders and care types. Yet women often report more tiredness and stress than men when providing childcare, while also experiencing more pain while performing adult care, as compared to childcare activities. Women of reproductive ages spend double the amount of care time associated with negative feelings, relative to men, most of which is spent on early childcare. We project a progressively widening gender gap in terms of positive feelings related to care in the coming decades. Future reductions in absolute caregiver well-being influenced by demographic changes at the population level may reduce workforce participation, productivity, and adversely impact psycho-physical condition of caregivers, if not offset by targeted policies.

Is It Only a Numbers Game? A Macro-Level Study of Educational Hypogamy

In many countries, the tendency for highly educated women to marry down in education has markedly increased. Research has pointed to an oversupply of highly educated women-that is, a marriage squeeze affecting women-as the core reason for this phenomenon. This study aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the causes of this marriage trend by analyzing over-time data drawn from IPUMS International census microdata samples for 34 countries. Several key findings are notable. First, the degree of educational hypogamy is associated with the magnitude of the deficit in college-educated men in the marriage market, which is consistent with the marriage squeeze hypothesis. Second, the degree of educational hypogamy is related to the economic empowerment of college-educated women, even after accounting for the mating squeeze effect. Third, counterfactual simulations show that while the mating squeeze is the major driver of educational hypogamy in the majority of the sample countries, the economic empowerment of college-educated women plays an equally important role in several countries.

Definitions of work-life balance in childfree dual-career couples: an inductive typology

Purpose

Work-life balance experiences of dual-career professional couples with children have received considerable attention, but there remains a paucity of research on the definitions of work-life balance among dual-career professional couples without children. This qualitative investigation sheds light on childfree couples' lives outside of work and their concomitant understanding of work-life balance.

Design/methodology/approach

The study draws on interviews with 21 dual-career professional couples in Canada and the US, exploring their non-work lives and how they conceive of work-life balance.

Findings

Thematic analyses demonstrate that this group, while free of child rearing responsibilities, still deals with myriad non-work obligations. These couples also defy uniform characterization. The inductive investigation uncovered four couple categories based on the individual members' career and care orientations. These included careerist, conventional, non-conventional and egalitarian couples. Definitions of work-life balance varied across couple type according to the value they placed on flexibility, autonomy and control, and their particular level of satisfaction with their work and non-work domains.

Originality/value

This study contributes to research at the intersection of work-life balance and various demographic groups by exploring the work-life balance of professional dual-career couples without children. Using an interpretive ontology, the study advances a typology of childfree dual-career professional couples. The findings challenge the rhetoric that these couples are primarily work-oriented but otherwise carefree. Thus, this study demonstrates ways that childfree couples are different as well as similar to those with children.

Lingering Male Breadwinner Norms as Predictors of Family Satisfaction and Marital Instability

Scholars have assumed that as gender revolutions are completed and societies achieve advanced levels of gender egalitarianism, married persons become happier, and marriages become stable. This study investigates how the norms about gender roles are associated with marital instability. The analysis is based on two propositions: (1) marital dissolution is an outcome of two rather distinct processes, deterioration of marital quality and formation of a decision to leave a marriage, and (2) the antithesis of advanced gender egalitarianism is a set of lingering male breadwinner norms, not gender inequality often manifested by working women performing second shifts. The data are from 68 national surveys conducted in 2002 and 2012 through ISSP coordination, and the sample of person-level analysis is restricted to ages 30–49, supposedly in the life cycle stages of family formation and expansion. The norms of gender roles are classified into four types: traditional norm, prescribing gendered division of labor; lingering male breadwinner norm, emphasizing men as the primary breadwinners while allowing flexibility of women’s roles; super woman norm, prescribing women to perform double roles; and egalitarian norm, emphasizing equal sharing of roles. At the country level, aggregate variables were constructed by calculating the percentage of adults who held each type of norm. The results strongly support the prediction that the male breadwinner norm at the societal level is detrimental to marital quality, while persons holding the egalitarian norm are most satisfied with their family lives.

Is Parental Divorce Homogamy Associated With a Higher Risk of Separation From Cohabitation and Marriage?

Numerous studies have shown that parental divorce is associated with an increase in adult children's divorce risk. We extend this literature by assessing how parental divorce on both sides of a couple is related to their partnership dynamics, specifically, whether there is parental divorce homogamy and whether a history of parental divorce for both partners is associated with increased dissolution risks for cohabiting and married unions. We use Finnish Census Panel data on 28,021 cohabiting and marital partnerships to conduct event-history models that follow individuals between ages 18 and 45. Findings show substantial parental divorce homogamy. Children with experience of parental divorce have 13% greater odds of cohabiting with and 17% greater odds of marrying a fellow child of divorcees, compared with those whose parents have not divorced. Moreover, contrary to evidence from the United States and Norway, our findings for Finland support an additive-rather than multiplicative-association between parental divorce homogamy and union dissolution. Parental divorce homogamy increases offspring's union dissolution risk by 20% for cohabitation and 70% for marriage, compared with couples for whom neither partner's parents are divorced. In Finland, the sizes of these associations are notably weaker than in the United States and Norway, likely because cohabitation and separation are more widespread and socially accepted in Finland, and an expansive welfare state buffers the socioeconomic consequences of divorce.

Obstacles to Birth Surname Retention Upon Marriage: How Do Hostile Sexism and System Justification Predict Support for Marital Surname Change Among Women?

Despite the ongoing shift in societal norms and gender-discriminatory practices toward more equality, many heterosexual women worldwide, including in many Western societies, choose to replace their birth surname with the family name of their spouse upon marriage. Previous research has demonstrated that the adherence to sexist ideologies (i.e., a system of discriminatory gender-based beliefs) among women is associated with their greater endorsement of practices and policies that maintain gender inequality. By integrating the ideas from the system justification theory and the ambivalent sexism theory, we proposed that the more women adhere to hostile and benevolent sexist beliefs, the more likely they would be to justify existing gender relations in society, which in turn, would positively predict their support for traditional, husband-centered marital surname change. We further argued that hostile (as compared to benevolent) sexism could act as a particularly strong direct predictor of the support for marital surname change among women. We tested these possibilities across three cross-sectional studies conducted among women in Turkey (Study 1, N=118, self-identified feminist women; Study 2, N=131, female students) and the United States (Study 3, N=140, female students). Results of Studies 1 and 3 revealed that higher adherence to hostile (but not benevolent) sexism was associated with higher support for marital surname change indirectly through higher gender-based system justification. In Study 2, the hypothesized full mediation was not observed. Consistent with our predictions, in all three studies, hostile (but not benevolent) sexism was found to be a direct positive predictor of the support for marital surname change among women. We discuss the role of dominant ideologies surrounding marriage and inegalitarian naming conventions in different cultures as obstacles to women’s birth surname retention upon marriage.

Can Regional Gender Ideologies Account for Variation of Gender Pay Gaps? The Case of Germany

While research often invokes gender disparities in wage-determining characteristics to explain gender pay gaps, why these gender disparities and gender pay gaps vary across contexts has received less attention. Therefore, I analyze how subnational gender ideologies predict gender pay gaps in two ways: as directly affecting gender pay gaps and as indirectly predicting gender pay gaps through intermediate gender disparities in determinants of wage. The analyses are based on German survey data (SOEP 2014–2018) supplemented with regional-level statistics. First, I leverage regional differences in predictors of gender ideologies to estimate region-specific gender ideologies. Mapping these gender ideologies across Germany reveals substantial regional variation. Second, multi-level models provide region-specific gender disparities in wage determinants and gender pay gaps. Results reveal that traditional gender ideologies are associated with women gaining less labor market experience and working less often in full-time jobs or supervising positions. In addition to this indirect association, gender ideologies directly predict the extent of adjusted gender pay gaps. These associations contribute novel evidence on regional variation of gender ideologies and how they can underlie explanations often invoked for gender pay gaps.

Individual's gender ideology and happiness in China

Gender ideologies encompass normative beliefs about how men and women should behave in certain contexts. Although many studies have examined factors predicting individuals' gender ideologies, little research has focused on the implications of gender ideology on individuals' subjective well-being, especially in Asian contexts. Using the pooled cross-sectional data from the China General Social Survey (CGSS, 2010/12/13/15), we explore the association between individual-level gender ideology and happiness in rural and urban China, paying special attention to potential variations in this association by gender and education level. Results suggest that an egalitarian gender ideology is positively associated with happiness in both rural and urban China. The association is stronger for urban men than for urban women and stronger for higher educated people than for lower educated people. The study highlights the importance of gender equality on individual subjective well-being and extends the literature by contextualizing individual-level gender ideology in China.

Country differences in the link between gender-role attitudes and marital centrality: Evidence from 24 countries

This study investigates factors that could explain why the association between the egalitarian gender-role attitudes and the attitudes toward the importance of marriage (marital centrality) differs across societies. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme for 24 countries in 2002 and 2012 and multilevel modeling, we explore whether the Gender Revolution and the Second Demographic Transition frameworks could explain the country-level differences in the association between gender-role attitudes and marital centrality. We find that the negative association between the egalitarian gender-role attitudes and marital centrality is stronger in countries with a higher gender equality level and a higher fertility level. This work highlights the importance of considering the progress of the gender revolution and the second demographic transition to understand the relationship between gender equality and family formation.

Educational assortative mating and time use in the home

This study examines the association between individuals' educational assortative mating and time spent on child care and housework. Focus is put on hypogamous couples, or couples in which wives have more education than their husbands. Relative resources and gender revolution frameworks are considered as contexts to explain why hypogamous couples may share their time differently than other couples. A series of ordinary least squares regressions with population and sampling weights are employed using American Time Use Survey data from 2003 to 2018. Three, separate analyses using relative education, gender, and all educational pairings as the independent variables of interest are presented with child care and housework as the dependent variables. The current findings show that men in hypogamous marriages perform about 10 min more of child care per day on average than their peers in hypergamous and homogamous marriages, and that this comes primarily from basic care activities. This accounts for approximately 43% of the difference between men and women in the average amount of time spent on child care. No clear pattern of significance is apparent comparing individuals' time spent on housework by relative education, suggesting that housework and child care have evolved differently in the context of gendered domestic responsibilities. Men in hypogamous marriages are more egalitarian in their sharing of child care. However, this is only true for couples in which men have at least a high school diploma and women are highly educated.

His and Her Education and Marital Dissolution: Adding a Contextual Dimension

Educationally hypogamous marriages, where the wife is more educated than the husband, have been expected to be less stable than other educational pairings, in part because they do not conform to social norms. With the reversal of the gender gap in education, such marriages have become more common than in the past. Recent research suggests that this new context might be beneficial for the stability of hypogamous unions compared to other educational pairings. Here, we investigate how educational matches in married couples are associated with divorce risks taking into account the local prevalence of hypogamy. Using Belgian census and register data for 458,499 marriages contracted between 1986 and 2001, we show that hypogamy was not associated with higher divorce rates than homogamy in communities where hypogamy was common. Against expectations, marriages in which the husband was more educated than the wife tend to exhibit the highest divorce rates. More detailed analysis of the different types of educational matches revealed that marriages with at least one highly educated partner, male or female, were less divorce prone compared to otherwise similar couple types.

His and Her Education and Marital Dissolution: Adding a Contextual Dimension

Educationally hypogamous marriages, where the wife is more educated than the husband, have been expected to be less stable than other educational pairings, in part because they do not conform to social norms. With the reversal of the gender gap in education, such marriages have become more common than in the past. Recent research suggests that this new context might be beneficial for the stability of hypogamous unions compared to other educational pairings. Here, we investigate how educational matches in married couples are associated with divorce risks taking into account the local prevalence of hypogamy. Using Belgian census and register data for 458,499 marriages contracted between 1986 and 2001, we show that hypogamy was not associated with higher divorce rates than homogamy in communities where hypogamy was common. Against expectations, marriages in which the husband was more educated than the wife tend to exhibit the highest divorce rates. More detailed analysis of the different types of educational matches revealed that marriages with at least one highly educated partner, male or female, were less divorce prone compared to otherwise similar couple types.

Navigating between two cultures: Immigrants' gender attitudes toward working women

BACKGROUND

Gender attitudes toward women's employment are of particular importance because they positively influence gender-equal outcomes in the labor market. Our understanding of the mechanisms that promote egalitarian gender attitudes among immigrants, however, remains limited.

OBJECTIVE

By studying first- and second-generation immigrants from multiple origins and living in different countries, this article seeks to explain under what conditions the prevalent cultural attitudes toward gender roles at the origin and destination influence immigrants' gender attitudes. We address three main research questions. First, does the country-of-origin gender ideology influence immigrants' views toward working women? Second, does the country-of-destination gender ideology influence immigrants' view toward working women? Are these relationships moderated by (1) the immigrant generation; (2) the age at arrival in the country of destination; (3) the length of residence at destination?

METHODS

Using data from the European Social Survey, we model immigrants' gender attitudes toward working women using linear cross-classified models to account for clustering into the country of origin and destination.

RESULTS

The results highlight the importance of the context of early socialization in shaping immigrants' gender attitudes. First-generation immigrants, and more specifically, adult migrants hold gender attitudes that reflect more strongly the country of origin's gender culture. In contrast, the positive association between gender ideology at destination and immigrants' gender attitudes is stronger among second-generation immigrants and child migrants.

CONTRIBUTION

We add to the literature on gender ideology formation by analyzing the influence of gender ideology at the origin- and destination-levels on the gender attitudes of immigrants from 96 countries of origin and residing across 32 countries of destination.