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A large body of work on consensual unions suggests a unitary household conception of consensual unions either as a precursor or an alternative to marriage. Another set of literature, though quite scanty, reveals gender differences in experiences in consensual unions. This paper adds to the argument that attitudes towards intimate relationships and marriage can be gendered. As a result, one partner may hope for the conversion of a consensual union to marriage whilst the other would not. The paper interrogates the ways in which the socio-cultural context of Ghana influences the gendered attitudes towards consensual unions as a form of intimate partnership and creates a sense of ‘commitment phobia’ particularly for men. To do this, thirty-one people with varying ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds were purposively sampled. In-depth interviews were conducted separately for the individual partners. The paper concludes that contrary to the unitary household conception of consensual unions, there is a gendered conceptualisation of these unions where women are more likely to think of consensual unions as a precursor to marriage while men think of it as an alternative to marriage.

COVID-19 is transforming how families and societies respond to this public health crisis. This global public health issue has both short and long term ramifications for how people work, go to school, care for families, and communicate. This paper provides a portrait of the changes and effects brought upon by the pandemic and government appeals for “self-restraint” (as opposed to lockdown policies in other countries). In addition, the experiences of Japanese families from the perspective of university students, looking at several aspects such as work, schooling, and relationships. The observations suggest that there are notable impacts upon the Japanese family brought upon by new living arrangements. These include increased interactions and opportunities for more frequent communication between family members. On the other hand, significant issues including financial insecurity caused by reduced or stagnant incomes, tensions between family members due to work-at-home lifestyles, exacerbate existing problems faced by Japanese families. The stress from new living arrangements in small dwellings may have further intensified gender inequality in the division of housework and carework, and become a catalyst for greater strain in relationships. This paper provides an assessment of the current changes experienced by Japanese families based on news reports and statistical data, as well as perceptions of the pandemic from Japanese university students.

This paper offers the concept of parental citizenship to capture the right of parents and their minor children to be citizens of the same country. It criticizes the current neglect of the familial aspects of immigration policies and citizenship laws, with the first centering on security and employment, and the latter conceptualized mainly in individualistic terms. One manifestation of this neglect, highlighted in the paper, is the double standard imposed on children in developed countries and in developing ones in relation to the centrality of their relations with their parents. While the first are protected by intense legal policies aimed at securing their right to live with and to be cared for by their parents, the latter are expected to be separated from their parents, and their right to parental care is ignored. The paper presents two detailed examples to demonstrate the current inconsistencies towards parental citizenship and the problematic outcomes of, on the one hand, ignoring it, and on the other hand, treating it as an almost absolute right. The paper calls for the integration of parental citizenship in the current debates over immigration policies and citizenship laws and for the evolvement of an international legal consensus over its importance and limits.

INTRODUCTIONIn Western countries during the 20th century important changes occurred in family life, models of masculinity and femininity and in the gender order of both public and private spheres. One of these changes was an emergence in 1970 of the involved fatherhood model. This model was to replace the traditional fatherhood model, in which the main obligation of men in family life was breadwinning. The new fatherhood model emphasized nurturing of children, which had previously been a core element of motherhood. According to the new model, men were expected to cross the traditional gender divide and take on some traditionally maternal obligations; fathering was encouraged to become more like mothering with less emphasis upon being breadwinners (see: Dowd, 2000; Johansson & Klinth, 2008; Wall and Arnold, 2007).The focus of this paper will be on the links between three elements: (1) the institutional context, in particular the family policy systems, (2) a conflict resulting from the coexistence of two different models of fatherhood, and (3) men's parenting behaviour. Poland and Sweden are two very different societies with distinct family policy systems. The comparison of Polish and Swedish societies provides an opportunity to analyse the links between family policy systems and individual parenting. A society's family policy system is always based on a particular discourse defining gender and parental roles, and through this discourse a particular gender order is preserved or rebuilt. On the one hand, it can support the traditional, patriarchal model of family, and on the other hand, it can promote gender equality, for example by promoting men's equal involvement in parenting (see: Saxonberg, 2013; Vuori, 2007). The particular discourse accepted within the welfare state policy impacts how men deal with conflicting models of fatherhood, and consequently, how they engage in parenting. This paper aims to document how contemporary Swedish and Polish fathers understand and fulfill their parental roles and how men deal with the conflicting models of fatherhood prevailing in their societies.METHODSThe research study is based on 52 interviews with Swedish and Polish fathers.2 The data was collected through in-depth interviews conducted between July 2012 and April 2013 with middle-class fathers living in big cities. Since my aim was to examine how men engage in fatherhood in the context of traditional parental roles, all interviewees were heterosexual, lived with their children and shared a common household with the mother of their children. Choosing such a homogenous group permitted a comparison of the impact of two different institutional and social contexts. In the middle-class heterosexual families, the traditional gender roles have been the most viable and visible. At the same time the middle class are most aware of gender equality issues and most likely to espouse equality compared to other social classes (Gottzen and Kremer-Sadlik, 2012).There were 32 interviews conducted with Polish fathers and 20 with Swedish fathers. Ages of the men ranged from 21 to 49, generally Swedish parents were slightly older, which can be explained by the fact that the average age of having the first child for women is higher in Sweden than in Poland, in 2011: 28.5 and 25.5 years old accordingly (Central Statistical Office of Poland, 2012a, Socialstyrelsen, 2013). Sample selection started with the participants who responded to announcements about the research and a call for eligible volunteers posted in day care institutions, on playgrounds, and in social networks on the Internet. Initial volunteers were asked for further contacts (snowballing). Among the eligible volunteers efforts were made to select diverse fathers on several criteria. Consequently, the interviewed men varied in their occupations and type of employment (self-employment, public or private sectors, unemployment), level of education, number of children and also the way they divided parental leave with mothers (this mostly concerned Swedish men). …

INTRODUCTIONFifty-three countries and hundreds of ethnic communities present the complexity of studying the family on the African continent. Scholars have however made efforts to provide a picture of this important African institution. They have focused on specific forms of families, communities and regions, and upon specific issues that affect the family. The heterogeneous character of the prevailing kinds of families in Africa in terms of the form, structure, function and evolution nevertheless contributes to the knowledge on the famity in general and in Africa in particular. An appraisal of these studies can serve to set the scene for the papers included in this special issue on the African family.A review of studies of any topic inevitably has to have limits to accommodate a reasonable number of themes and periods. Therefore no review of literature can be regarded as complete and comprehensive. For this reason, reviews of existing research invariably do not cover the entire literature on the chosen themes of families in Africa within a given time-frame.This review covers research on family and related topics in Africa that have been published in a major journal on family studies, namely the Journal of Comparative Family Studies, during the past 20 years (1994-2013). In particular, the studies examined here are those that dealt with the themes of the family on the African continent. This geographic specificity is required as the journal has also carried studies of African families that exist outside the boundaries of the continent. For instance, there were research articles in this journal that presented African families in the US and the UK. After the initial collection and selection for the relevant themes and studies, a total of 39 papers were finally chosen for this review.A majority of the papers carried in the journal focused on marriage and family in South Africa. They dealt with the household, roles in the family, family structure, cohabitation, marriage, children, and family policies in South Africa. What follows is a presentation of the studies under relevant themes, starting with those concerned with children.CHILDREN IN THE FAMILYAfrican families generally prefer to have more children than the international norm. The importance of children in the lives of Africans relate to matters of lineage, the supply of labour and support. This is a uniform trend across the continent. Analysing the Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey (CDHS) data for the year 1991 (2,868 women who were either married or in an informal union), Calves and Meekers (1999) present the advantages and disadvantages of having several children in the family in an African country. This survey explored the specific benefits and the drawbacks of having more children. Two kinds of informal unions-living with partners and living apart-were identified. Women in informal unions were younger than those in married unions. They were also more likely to be in monogamous unions than were married women in the country. Informal unions were influenced by socio-economic development, and women in these alliances tended to live in urban areas and had relatively higher levels of education. In informal unions where partners lived apart, women had secondary or higher education while their partners also had similar levels of education. As to the advantages of having several children, a number of them were quite prominent for all categories: labour assistance, financial support, old-age help, affection and companionship, lineage and posterity, pride and self-affirmation. The disadvantages of having several children in the family were mainly financial costs, education, discipline, sickness/death of children, and concerns about the future. The analysis showed that women in informal unions (both co-resident and non co-resident) and not married women were likely to have many children but they do not know its advantages. Though large families was a norm in Cameroon the desire to have large families were not uniform across informal unions and formal marriages. …

In the last few decades, there has been growing scholarly interest about the implications of women’s increased economic role on household decision-making dynamics. Contributing to these conversations, the current paper examines couples (wives and husbands) perceptions and attitudes towards women’s decision-making power in the context of Ghana’s small-scale fishery where both couples engage in the same economic activity, performing different, but complementary roles. The study involved interviews with 20 and 18 married female and male fisherfolk respectively, which was part of a larger study by the first author among fisherfolk in the south-western coast of Ghana. We show that accounts of perceived decision-making power of women varied by spouse. Using a gender lens, we show how both women and men discursively reproduced and challenged hegemonic gender discourses and relations in different contexts. We argue that exploring the gaps in couples’ account of women’s household decision-making power as well as their perceptions and attitudes towards such roles provides important ground to understanding the inconsistencies in the outcomes of programs targeted at women empowerment and gender equality.

This paper analyses the age and educational homogamy of same-sex couples in Germany over a 20-year period from 1996 to 2015. Data of the Microcensus show that cohabiting same-sex couples are less likely to be homogamous than cohabiting different-sex couples, both in terms of age and education. For same-sex couples, gender matters, male same-sex couples being the most diverse. The analyses thus confirm previous results for other European countries. Hitherto, changes in the homogamy of same-sex couples over time had not been studied in Europe, mainly due to data constraints. However, major changes in the visibility and legal acceptance of same-sex couples suggest that their patterns of partner choice are becoming more similar to those of different-sex couples. Our analyses show that the age difference among female same-sex couples has indeed narrowed over time, converging with the age difference among different-sex couples. For male same-sex couples though, there is no clear trend. In terms of educational homogamy, contrary to our assumption, we find a clear decline among same-sex couples of both genders since the 2000s, making them even more dissimilar to different-sex couples.

This paper documents trends in and examines determinants of stay-at-home motherhood in urban China from 1982 to 2015. China once had the world’s leading female labor force participation rate. Since the economic reforms starting from the early 1980s, however, some mothers have been withdrawing from the labor force due to diminished state support, a rise in intensive parenting, and heightened work-family conflicts. Based on data from the 1982, 1990, and 2000 Chinese censuses, the 2005 mini-census, and the 2006–2015 Chinese General Social Survey, we find mothers’ non-employment increased for every educational group and grew at a much faster rate among mothers than it did among fathers, particularly those with small children. Moreover, the negative relationships between mothers’ education and non-employment, and between mothers’ family income and non-employment weakened overtime. This is possibly due to women with more established resources can better “afford” the single-earner arrangement and also more emphasize the importance of intensive parenting, than their less resourced counterparts. These findings signal the resurgence of a gendered division of labor in urban China.

This study was a point of departure for future research on the need for a coherent understanding and knowledge of parenting in Bangladesh. This article presents the findings from an integrative research review on parenting in Bangladesh. A comprehensive search conducted in PubMed, Science Direct, and PsychINFO using the keywords “parenting”, “childcare”, “motherhood”, “fatherhood”, “mothering”, “fathering”, each paired with “Bangladesh” yielded 246 articles. Twenty papers published between 2006 and 2018 were selected for thematic analysis based on pre-set criteria. In most studies, the term mother was used interchangeably with parent, with mothers regarded as the primary caregiver. Parenting in the Bangladeshi context was found to be conceptualized primarily in terms of attitudes, disciplinary practices, feeding, parent–child interaction, and psychosocial stimulation. Parenting components aimed at moral development and attachment building in children were underrepresented. The data revealed largely inconsistent and uncoordinated discussions of parental practices, demonstrating the lack of a holistic approach in the literature in Bangladesh. Research on parenting in Bangladesh favors gendered assumptions of females as the primary caregiver. Based on their findings, the authors recommend qualitative studies to better reflect and conceptualize the concept of parenting in Bangladesh.

A number of studies have used samples from Western societies to assess educational differences in the likelihood of unintended pregnancies and births, but the issue is vastly understudied in Korea. To fill the gap in the literature, this paper draws data from the two most recent rounds of the National Survey on Fertility, Family Health, and Welfare ( N = 20,669), and adopted a competing risks framework to estimate the hazards of an intended first birth and unintended first birth relative to no birth. Results from discrete-time event history analyses indicate that women’s educational attainment significantly reduces the odds of unintended first childbirth, even after accounting for various sociodemographic factors. Women with two- and four-year college degrees were 47.5% and 63.9% less likely to experience unintended childbearing compared with those without a high school degree. Women’s higher educational attainment is also negatively associated with the odds of intended childbearing relative to no birth. Hence, the present study suggests that there is a strong negative association between unintended childbearing and educational attainment among Korean women. These results are in accordance with Western patterns, and do not support an inverted correlation reported in Japan. Interaction between gender role ideology and educational attainment also indicated that women’s higher education tends to reduce the probability of experiencing unintended childbirth except when women have a very strong beliefs in gender equity. A better understanding on the determinants of unintended childbearing may be useful for identifying vulnerable segments of the population and preventing the intergenerational transmission of social disadvantages through fertility behaviors.

The reversal of the gender gap in education and the emergence of couples in which the woman has a better economic or education status than her partner have been key shifts in family dynamics in recent decades. One of the consequences of this phenomenon is a more egalitarian division of tasks within couples, which is derived from the stronger resources of more educated women to negotiate roles. In this paper, I explored the division of unpaid domestic work in couples in France, Spain, and the United States (US), taking into account the level of education and the income of both members of the couple. The results show that hypogamous couples by education are more egalitarian than other types of couples, but the reversal of the gender gap in education has a relative effect on the division of housework. In that sense, better status in terms of earnings supposes more equality within the couple. However, gender inequalities persist even when the woman makes more money than her partner. A higher level of income is not sufficient to obtain more equality within the household, and other normative changes must be implemented in societies. L'inversion du fossé entre les sexes en matière d'éducation et l'émergence de couples au sein desquels la femme a une meilleure éducation et un meilleur statut économique que son partenaire est une des clefs pour comprendre les dynamiques familiales de ces dernières décennies. L'une des conséquences de ce phénomène est la division plus égalitaire des tâches au sein des couples due aux meilleures compétences d'une femme plus éduquée, capable de négocier son rôle. Dans cet article, j'analyse la distribution des tâches non rémunérées au sein des couples en France, en Espagne et aux États Unis, en tenant compte du niveau d'éducation et des revenus des deux membres du couple. Les résultats montrent que les couples hypogames par éducation son plus égalitaires que d'autres types de couples, mais l'inversion du fossé entre les sexes du point de vue de l'éducation a un effet relatif sur la distribution des tâches domestiques. En ce sens, un meilleur statut en termes de revenus suppose plus d'égalité dans le couple. Cependant, l'inégalité des genres persiste même quand la femme gagne plus d'argent que son partenaire. Un plus haut niveau de revenus n'est pas suffisant pour obtenir plus d'égalité au foyer. D'autres changements normatifs doivent être mis en œuvre dans les sociétés.

As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic disrupts established daily routines, it underlines the role that families play in redefining social order and reorganizing people’s economic and social lives. In this paper, we investigate methods that Chinese and South Korean families have adopted to cope with the rapid changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. We emphasize families’ responses to sudden changes in three domains: education and home schooling, economic downturn and unemployment, and mental health challenges. By integrating online education and remote working into a new form of family life and sharing economic and emotional risks among members, families shape social order during a period of unprecedented uncertainty. We highlight the fact that family members experience intensified work-family or school-family conflicts. Disadvantaged families are the most severely affected, as they are at high risk of job loss and lack proper protections. The absence of institutional protections and interventions has created further economic and emotional hardships for these vulnerable families. Informal and nonregular workers require more stable labor market conditions for the well-being of their families. Future research may include a systematic data collection and analysis of disadvantaged families, as this would offer a better understanding of the challenges and untenable choices that families face during times of crisis.

Globally, COVID-19 has caused disruption to all social institutions and sectors of the economy. Projections are that the pandemic is likely to deepen hardships already experienced by various groups in society, especially the vulnerable. As COVID-19 continues to unfold and spread, it has become apparent that the virus and its associated problems are more than biomedical issues. Against a backdrop where researchers and practitioners from public health, epidemiology, and medicine are dominating research, discussions and publication, the article advances the argument that sociologists are well qualified and positioned to explore the social causes, social consequences, and responses to COVID-19. Sociological input is pivotal to comprehensive understanding and development of effective responses to the pandemic. In this context, and specifically focusing on the family despite the complexity and dynamism attendant to this institution, the article contributes real-time insights on how the pandemic is unfolding in Zimbabwe and the associated responses, or their absence. The paper addresses lacunae in availability of quality and meaningful understanding of the pandemic particularly from the perspective of the family as the basic unit of any society in both urban and rural contexts. The lived experiences and situated meanings of COVID-19 at the family level are important in interrogating its implications to communities, the future and social policy.

As a lower-middle income country, Ghana is noted for having a progressive economy, health system, and family trends. However, COVID-19, with it associated restrictions, has brought changes to various aspects of Ghanaians’ lives. In this paper, we review information from government websites, online media websites, social media, academic articles, and anecdotal evidence to track changes brought about by the pandemic. Specifically, we focus on economic well-being, education and schooling, family interaction, mental health and communication in community as well ethnic, cultural, and social class variations. Findings show that the COVID-19 pandemic is changing life for all Ghanaians, notably by reinforcing existing inequalities and highlighting previously known gaps in service, coverage, and access across multiple sectors, including healthcare, business and education. Family patterns are changing for both the nuclear and extended family units. The pandemic has created both challenges and opportunities for parents to engage with their children. Anxiety levels are heightened and psychological services have consequently been made widely available. Education has slowly and unevenly gone virtual. Further, the crisis has generated local innovations to meet the nation’s needs during the pandemic. The findings call for national reforms in the production and distribution of goods and services in all sectors as well as empirical work into the long-term effects of the pandemic on Ghanaians.

The main purpose of this paper is to discuss how COVID-19 has impacted Korean families. The economic well-being of Korean families has been threatened because many family members lost their jobs or earned reduced incomes due to the pandemic. COVID-19 substantially changed the work environment and has provided the momentum for the growth of flexible work including telecommuting in Korea, which was not commonly used before the pandemic. However, the work-from-home arrangements created an ambiguous boundary between work and family, particularly among employed mothers because childcare facilities and schools were closed during COVID-19. The postponed 2020 school year started with online schooling in April, and children in secondary schools often continued private education during the pandemic. Although COVID-19 provided an opportunity to build emotional ties for some families, many Korean families who were stuck at home experienced relational difficulties. Socioeconomic and gender inequality along with discrimination against certain groups were heightened. Our analysis of social media posts showed that childcare, schooling, and religion were important domains of family life during the pandemic. We conclude that COVID-19 has changed the meaning of home in Korea from a place to sleep to a basecamp involving numerous major activities related to work, schooling, parenting, housework, shopping, leisure, and religion. Korean families have found it challenging to spend intensive time with their family, to share gendered family responsibilities, and to support other families. Thus, we suggest that professional and policymakers develop a new service model that is more effective for the changing family climate.

In this paper, we discuss the impact of COVID-19 on Brazilian families, considering socioeconomic data from before and during the outbreak. The coronavirus threatens Brazil’s entire population. Since May 2020, Brazil is considered the pandemic epicenter, presenting high rates of infections and deaths at least up to the end of August 2020. Families in which members may have lost their jobs or are living from informal work face the challenge of protecting themselves from COVID-19, but also of maintaining financial conditions despite the risk. Access to healthcare has proven to be more precarious for the poor, Indigenous, Black, street population, women, and LGBTQI+. Impacts on the mental health of family members who comply with social isolation and are overburdened with domestic duties, home office and their children’s education by digital media are increased by stress, anxiety, and uncertainties about the future. Due to the great impact COVID-19 has provoked on Brazilian families, already existing socioeconomic iniquities increased during the pandemic. Unemployment, bad basic sanitation conditions and a high rate of informal work contrast with the situation of high-income families. The post-pandemic period will be decisive for Brazil to prioritize the recovery of its already existing public policies. We suggest the proposed initiatives be organized around the goal of mitigating adverse effects on mental health aggravated by COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a significant effect on the vulnerable portion of society, particularly on Indigenous and visible minority immigrants. We, as a minority family from Bangladesh who are on Indigenous land in Saskatchewan Canada, explore family-based pandemic resiliency, mainly focusing on Indigenous notions of resistance and reconnection. This article discusses our family-based resiliency on family interaction, social distancing, and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper explores a family-based decolonizing autoethnography as a methodology for understanding health and wellness from an immigrant family’s perspective. We discussed why Indigenous and immigrant stories matters for building resiliency and resistance within a family. How do we know it is effective? How can it be helpful for others? Here, we highlight how Indigenous Elders, Knowledge-Keepers, and ancestors’ stories helped us for building our resistance and reconnection to be active, hopeful, and joyful during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The topic of mate selection in contemporary India provides an opportunity to illustrate the value of using scientific theory to guide family research. This modified transcript from a keynote address first describes the benefit to theory guided family science research and then provides a few select examples of the way theory informs a better understanding of patterns and trends in contemporary Indian mate selection. The availability of robust data, powerful computing and advanced methodologies has made data mining, or the unguided exploration of the data, more attractive to researchers. When data analysis is not guided by theoretical principals, generalizable advances in research is compromised. This paper focuses on a quantitative, deductive approach to knowledge building yet understands that qualitative and inductive research is also important in the scientific process and theory building. Contemporary Indian mate selection continues to adapt to a 21stcentury, globally influenced, socio-cultural landscape. The Indian population is large and diverse. The author recognizes that heterogeneity while also connecting current Indian mate selection patterns to select well established research in the field.

In our paper, we study the factors shaping the formation of four different types of marriage in Switzerland: marriages with a Swiss partner, marriages with partners from the neighboring countries which are geographically proximate and where one of the official languages of Switzerland is spoken, marriages with partners from other European countries and with partners from overseas. Going beyond the current state of research, we study not only the national structural characteristics of the Swiss partner market and the individual resources of the spouses, but the actual meeting places of the partners and their reasons for being in these locations. Thus, we analyze whether, in a globalizing world and partner market, it is still primarily national opportunity structures that shape different forms of intermarriage. Using a mixed-methods approach we first show, based on census data, that the probability of these marriages is shaped by the structural opportunities of the partner market in Switzerland and individual characteristics like age and education. Second, relying on survey information, we demonstrate that bi-national relationships exhibit a specific pattern of meeting places: in particular, those couples with one partner from a non-neighboring or non-European country often meet abroad and in more open foci of activity. This has not previously been demonstrated empirically in the research literature and clearly shows that the factors shaping these marriages are not covered by a theoretical model focusing on the structural opportunities of national societies. Finally, we scrutinize narrative interviews and show that meeting a spouse abroad is the result of both specific partner preferences and patterns of spatial mobility. Thus, global opportunity structures are to a certain degree shaped by individual agency.

Globally, marriage is on a decline and this can be traced to as early as the 1940s in South Africa. This paper explores marriage declines in South Africa, specifically the reasons why young, educated women are delaying marriage. It draws on a qualitative study using in-depth interviews with thirty Zulu-speaking female university students in Durban, South Africa. Women with higher education attainment opt for a later age of marriage in order to establish themselves financially, gain independence, build their careers and accrue some assets as well as to improve their families’ living standards. The women in this study are highly aspirant and want to marry partners with attributes that are equally matched to them. The study suggests that it is important to focus on the attitudes of young, educated women in order to better understand the delay in marriage.

This paper examined challenges parents in intercultural marriages are confronted with when raising their multicultural children in Japan by weighing societal pressures, language usage, and inner struggles. Twenty interviews were conducted with Japanese and non-Japanese parents and revealed that parents, children, and society were in constant negotiation interacting and influencing each other. Extended families, residential communities, and schools were key factors which influenced the family’s experience. The role conformity plays in Japan ( Hofstede, 2001 ) and the tightness of Japanese culture ( Gelfand et al., 2011 ) were substantial sources of stress for the parents. The descriptive data suggested societal pressure to conform led to non-Japanese parents feeling out of place. Various levels of language proficiency of family members led to stress and isolation within some multicultural homes. Finally, inner struggles linked to cultural differences led to emotional distress. Visual markers, differing norms and values of the parents’ heritage cultures, distinct gender roles in Japan, as well as differing core assumptions deeply rooted in the parents’ cultural foundations contributed to these struggles.

Many studies within the growing field of the intersection of migration and aging revolve around the carework done by migrants for the elderly. However, the care issues of migrants who are growing old themselves have remained underexplored. This paper contributes to this field of study, focusing on older New Zealand-based Filipina migrants’ narratives around the carework they do for their families and the care arrangements they desire in old age to investigate links between individual narratives and the discourses around carework and aging. Applying thematic analysis ( Braun & Clarke, 2006 ) with a poststructuralist approach to language on data from pakikipagkwentuhan (an indigenous method for collecting narratives) with 20 Filipinas, I show that women account for their increased performance of carework for their families by calling on notions of acculturation to New Zealand and Filipino constructions of motherhood and femininity. I also demonstrate how women’s own desires for care arrangements in later life are shaped by idealized Filipino family-based care as well as idealized New Zealand state-supported care. I argue that carework is a task women are conscripted to perform for others throughout their life for the benefit of families, communities, and the state(s) they belong to ( Browne, 1998 ; Calasanti, 2010 ; Cruickshank, 2003 ); and yet there is increasing demand for women to be responsible for their own care in aging. The discussion engages with classic and current feminist literature on the gendered construction of carework and the contemporary globalized, ‘professionalized’ context in which an increasing amount of it is performed.

This paper targets at understanding the causal effects of maternal marital instability on children’s marriage dissolutions through exploring a natural experiment and implementing IV approach, the forced rustication during 1968-1978 in China. With the 2008 and 2010 waves of Chinese Family Panel Survey, significant estimates imply that in urban China, one extra year of forced immigration has increased mother’s marital instability by 1.5%, further contributed to doubling the risk of her children to encounter marital instability. Contemporary comparisons show that, on average, the sent-down parents experienced more marital instability by 2%; married two years later; married older spouses; value relatively less in spousal intimacy. The latter two are proved to be significant mediators.

With rapid economic growth, China has undergone substantial social, cultural and ideological transformations over the recent decades. In the meantime, trends in China’s family structure have changed dramatically as well. However, due to data limitations, research on trends in divorce has been very rare in China; especially the quantitative studies at the macrolevel. The literature indicates that despite the very low divorce rate from the 1960s to the 1970s, China’s divorce rate has increased greatly in recent decades, but this increase has been uneven in both space and time. Therefore, this paper analyzes trends in China’s divorce rate at the national, regional and provincial levels. The research results suggest that China’s divorce rate has witnessed a steady and noticeable increase in the recent two decades, with the Crude Divorce Rate (CDR) increasing by 178% and Refined Divorce Rate (RDR) increasing by 211%. Among the four provincial-level municipalities, Chongqing shows strikingly high divorce rates, whereas the divorce rates of Beijing and Shanghai have leveled off in recent years. Among all the provincial level units, the Moslem-majority Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region ranks first, whereas Tibet ranks last.

Given the burgeoning literature on the workfamily nexus, the dearth of scholarship on satisfaction with work-life balance is surprising. In this paper, we use multi-level models to build on the Demand-Resource model to predict satisfaction with work-life balance among partnered individuals in 26 European countries (N = 7,990). We find support for individual-level measures of work and non-work lives influencing work-life balance satisfaction. We also document how nation-level gender inequality moderates the influence of family-to-work conflict on satisfaction with work-life balance. The results demonstrate the importance of investigating the work-family nexus within and across national contexts, yielding implications for understanding the 21st century family.

Couched within the bioecological systems theory, this paper examined whether (i) mothers and fathers differed in their perceived engagement with their school-age children’s routine care, care on demand, academic interaction at home, and academic interaction at school; (ii) mothers’ and fathers’ engagement varied as a function of gender-of-child and rural and urban residence; and (iii) socioeconomic and support variables were associated with fathers’ engagement with their children’s care and academic work in twoparent rural and urban families in Bangladesh. Mother and father pairs from 40 rural and 41 urban families participated in the study. Mothers and fathers were separately interviewed to collect the data. Mothers spent more time in children’s routine care and academic interaction at home than fathers did in both rural and urban families. Urban parents spent more time with their children than rural parents did. While rural mothers spent more time in sons’ routine care and academic interaction at home than they did with daughters, urban fathers spent more time with sons’ routine care than they did with their daughters. Whereas fathers’ age and number of children negatively and length of marriage positively predicted fathers’ engagement in children’s routine care, fathers’ age negatively and length of marriage and extra-familial support positively predicted fathers’ engagement in children’ academic interaction at home in rural families. Findings are discussed in relation to rural and urban fathers’ changing roles in children’s care and intellectual development in Bangladesh.

Since the early 1990s, an explicit parenting support policy has made its way onto political agendas in Europe. This policy responds to a growing political demand to avoid the failure of the parental educational mission and “new social risks” for children. To educate parents to carry out their own role, improve their “competence”, and control their practices, corresponds to the construction of “parenting” as a public problem and the defence of a “parental determinism,” mobilizing different knowledge and empirical results. In our paper, we argue that the policy process that led to current parenting support policies is the outcome of a long process that imposes an explanation for the reason of this revival. We argue that we could be facing a new parenting regime in France.

This paper examines the policies and resources regarding the care of children under three years of age in two European countries that represent two different models of Welfare State, on the one hand Spain, framed in the Mediterranean or familist model and, on the other hand, Norway, enclosed in the Scandinavian model. Indeed, the care of children under three years is a matter of particular relevance since it influences directly on work-life balance strategies and also on gender and social equality. These aspects have been analyzed using the most relevant theories about the principles and motivations of the different Welfare State models. Simultaneously we have examined the existing resources in both countries and the challenges faced as a result of the social transformations occurred in recent decades and, specifically, the modifications in family policies and resources during the current financial crisis.

Increasing the number of graduate students has been identified as a priority for South African universities. Despite the shortage of graduate students in South Africa and the impetus to increase the number of graduate students, little is known about some of the impediments that undergraduate students, particularly Black students, face in pursuing graduate school. This paper critically examines the role of the family, social class, and race in considering the pursuit of graduate studies, from the perspective of students. The research adopts intersectionality as a theoretical framework and is based on focus group interviews with student participants. The findings indicate that race and social class must be understood as factors that operate concurrently and that participants’ educational plans are informed by the needs of their family and by raceclass factors. Socio-political and economic factors in South Africa are also discussed in relation to the family, class, race and the pursuit of graduate studies.

The practice of early marriage is deeply rooted in the socio-cultural structure and is well prevalent in rural India despite marriage-prohibiting laws. The paper examines happiness and psychological well-being and its influence by various aspects of marriage among young married women. Multistage sampling technique was used to interview 654 married women, 13-24 years in rural West Bengal. Mean age at marriage was found to be 16 years. One-third reported adjustment problem initially after marriage. Logistic regression analysis results showed marital happiness was positively influenced by less spousal difference in opinion; couple educational status, able to adjust marital problems and wish to have same life partner given an option of partner selection. No significant association was found between happiness and type of marriage and husband’s currently staying with wife.

This paper explores resilience in gay and lesbian parent families from a chrono-system perspective, which refers to the development of resilience through time. Resilience is characterised differently by different cultures. In one sub-culture, research on the experiences of children raised in gay or lesbian parent families in South Africa shows that the children often feel vulnerable facing societal heteronormativity), even though gay and lesbian parent families often work diligently to create a sense of belonging within the society in which they live. However, many family studies have either ignored general familial bonding with society or dealt with it only generally. With the significant impact of South African legal transformation over time regarding gay and lesbian parent families’ position in society, a chrono-system perspective of factors that influence resilience in gay and lesbian parent families becomes relevant for theory building and psychological support.

This paper explores the changing role of grandparents in rural Black families in pre and post-apartheid South Africa since the legacy of apartheid has resulted in some unique employment and family formation patterns in both urban and rural Black communities. The draconian apartheid laws, particularly the Group Areas Act, forced Black people to live far away from the city and men had to migrate far away from rural families in order to work in the cities. As a result, men’s inability to meet their obligations as breadwinners affected their interactions with their families, in particular, their children. Post-apartheid South Africa is also marked by the increased female labor migration from rural areas to small towns and cities to look for employment. Their children are left behind in the grandmothers’ care who then assumes the task of child rearing. The literature also indicates that it is common for Black children in rural areas to have regular, and sometimes, intensive daily contact with adults who are not their parents. Patterns of caregiving within families and between generations are being challenged and reconfigured by the HIV epidemic. The literature indicates that in South Africa, those living with HIV/AIDS are under the age of 50 years. Younger generation that is supposed to be providing care for elderly people (particularly grandmothers) are no more longer able to do so due to their own HIV/AIDS related illness, and 60% of orphans in South Africa live in grandparent-headed households. As a result, many older people have taken on the role of sole caregiver to the younger generations due to HIV/AIDS deaths among young adults. Therefore, Black grandmothers play a pivotal role in child rearing and parenting support, yet there is very little literature available on the role of rural grandparents in black families in raising their grandchildren. Black grandmothers’ involvement in child care is related to parents’ need for help. Grandmother care-giving is very crucial particularly when the well-being of children is in jeopardy, families have low-incomes and limited resources, and parents are experiencing social problems.

The intersectionality perspective reveals that gender relations are intertwined in complex ways with other forms of social inequality. Through this perspective, researchers have come to understand that an individual’s social location as reflected in intersecting identities must be at the forefront in any investigation of gender, in particular, must be understood in the context of power relations embedded within social identities. In this paper, the focus is on the intersection of age, gender and livelihoods in the familial lives of elderly women heading households in Ngangelizwe, Mthatha in South Africa. This study uncovers how the experiences of 15 elderly women who are heads of households are shaped by their current socio-economic conditions as well as reveals ways in which they exercise agency and thereby actively engaging with their socio-economic realities rather than experiencing these as defining features in their lives and livelihoods. As noted in the intersectionality perspective, individuals are not passive recipients of an identity position; instead, they practice each aspect of identity as informed by other identities.

The family in South Africa does not present uniform characteristics. It exhibits features that are dissimilar in terms of structure, form, role and functions. It has also been assumed to produce forms characteristic of different race and ethnic groups. Irrespective of these forms, changes are manifest in the family. The colonial and apartheid legacies had a strong impact on family life in the country. Ranging from industrialization to urbanization to labour migration there were crucial and decisive factors that changed the way the family functions or had previously functioned. Some of these changes are quite prominent and are found in the position of children and the roles of mothers, fathers and grandparents. There have also been notable changes in fertility, which has been low in relation to that of other sub-Saharan countries. Furthermore, there is evidence of the emergence of new forms of the family. The same-gendered type is one example. In the given context of these unique historical, social and political circumstances, this paper reviews some of the recent important studies of the family in South Africa. It offers insights into the transition that the South African family has been undergoing.

This paper uses the 2010 General Social Survey in Time Use (Canadian time diary data, N = 1,932) to examine the gender gap in parental time allocated to childcare for families at different stages indicated by ages of children. We suggest that the general increase in fathers’ time with children matters little as long as a substantial gender gap remains. We analyse how the gender gap in weekday childcare time varies at different life stages of parenting. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique is used with weighted time use averages to compare childcare time allocations of mothers and fathers from couples in which at least one person works full time. We argue that the analysis of the childcare gender gap during the week is the most indicative of changing or persistent gender roles. Our results suggest fathers allocate the most time to childcare at the youngest stages of the family. However, the differences in mean characteristics do not account for the entire gap. Gender differences, and the unexplained proportion of the differences, decrease markedly as children leave toddlerhood. The decomposition analyses suggest that market forces and family characteristics do not fully explain the gap in childcare time with the exception of the passage from toddlerhood. We suggest the fluctuating gap is consistent with childrens’ age-linked traditional gendered family role expectations. The decomposition approach contributes to our understanding of gendered division of labor in parenting by counterfactually analyzing the gap beyond the father and mother characteristic differences.

The rising proportion of singles in several East and South-east Asian countries and the related concerns of low fertility have resulted in policy makers in the region introducing state sponsored matchmaking services to help singles enter the nuptial phase. In this paper, the case of Singapore is discussed with particular reference to the hesitation of singles to use such marriage intermediaries. Using a qualitative approach involving 83 single Singaporeans of different ethnic and social backgrounds, the aversion to commodification in the mate selection process, the lack of authenticity and spontaneity that ensues from finding matches through commercial services, and the concern that agencies do not provide quality singles are identified as potential barriers to the use of matchmaking services. Possibly the early involvement of the state in promoting such matchmaking services is being resisted by singles who are averse to subjugating their freedom to pursue the spontaneity of romantic love for the pragmatism of matchmaking.

INTRODUCTIONSocieties in Eastern Europe underwent profound social, economic and cultural changes at the beginning of the 1990s, leading to transformations in family related behaviors. Fertility has decreased rapidly, as have marriage rates. Important life events such as leaving parental homes, marriage and childbearing have been postponed to older ages, and alternative forms of living arrangements (consensual unions and childbearing outside marriage) gained much more popularity.Cohabitation as a form of partnership began to extend to Eastern European countries during the socialist period and accelerated after the change in political regimes (Speder, 2005; Muresan, 2007a; Philipov and Jasilioniene, 2007; Hoem and Kostova, 2008; Hoem et ah, 2009a; Hoem et ah, 2009b; Thornton and Philipov, 2009). Births in consensual unions increased all over Europe in the last decades, making a much greater contribution to the nonmarital births than single mothers (without a co-residing partner) (Kiernan, 2004; Thomson, 2005; Sobotka and Toulemon, 2008).Although more women choose cohabitation as their first partnership in recent times, cohabitation has remained linked to marriage in this part of Europe. This, in Heuveline and Timberlake's typology (2004), is cohabitation as a prelude to marriage (lasting a relatively short time and having a low frequency of childbearing) or as a stage in the marriage process (usually leading to marriage, but often after childbirth). Support for this argument is offered by Perelli-Harris and collaborators (2012) who document great variation across European countries in terms of partnership transformation between first conception and first birth.The main factor that triggers marriage in cohabitating couples is pregnancy (Berrington, 2001; Blossfeld and Mills, 2001; Hoem et al., 2009b) and the effect has been found to be strongly time-dependent. The rate of entry into marriage from cohabitation sharply increases as soon as a woman becomes pregnant but decreases just as sharply if the couple does not marry soon after the childbirth (Berrington, 2001; Blossfeld and Mills, 2001; Manning, 2004; Baizan et al., 2005; Steele et al., 2005; Steele et al., 2006).The aim of this paper is to study the transformation of consensual unions into marriage in several Eastern European countries and the role of fertility-mainly of anticipated fertility, which is the acknowledgement of a pregnancy-in this process. Since Eastern European countries have undergone profound social, economic and cultural transformations in their transition from socialism to democracy and from a centrally planned to a market economy, we investigate whether pregnancy poses the same pressure towards marriage before and after the change in political regime. Since the literature on childbearing within cohabitation signals the existence of a negative educational gradient, we investigate whether the effect of a pregnancy/birth on the transition to marriage is uniform across social categories.We choose to compare three former socialist countries, namely Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania, to see how far similarities go and when differences appear. On the one hand, the choice of countries is motivated by the similarities found by some authors in the non-marital fertility behavior in Eastern European countries (Perelli-Harris et ah, 2012). On the other, these countries share a similar background associated with socialist regimes, although they have different cultural and social histories as well as different socio-economic transitions to democracy and market economy.We carry out our research on data from the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey (Vikat et ah, 2007). The rich retrospective datasets allow us to reconstruct the partnership and fertility history for several thousands of women in each country. We perform our investigation by means of event history analysis. The novelty of our research consists in investigating, in a comparative perspective, the transformation of consensual unions into marriages when a child is on the way, assessing the effect for different social categories and different periods of time, marked by different social, economic and cultural contexts. …

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)INTRODUCTIONOne of the most striking features of Sub-Saharan African households is the complexity of their structure. At the sibship level, such a complexity is notably driven by the practice of child fostering. As defined by demographers, child fostering consists of sending a child to another home where host parents take care of the child. The period of fostering can vary from one year to a very long period of time. In any case, the link between the foster child and his or her biological parents is kept (Isiugo-Abanihe, 1985).1 Although observed in various places in the developing world, this practice is particularly widespread in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ainsworth, 1996; Akresh, 2004 ; Isiugo-Abanihe, 1985).2 According to a Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) report on 11 West African countries, the proportion of foster children among children younger than 14 years old equals on average 10 per cent in the region.3 In Cameroon, the context of this study, 13.4 per cent of male-headed households host a schoolage foster child.The question of the effect of child fostering on the welfare of children, which is usually measured in standard quantitative surveys by their schooling status, has raised increased interest from applied economists (Akresh, 2004; Beck et al., 2013; Cichello, 2003; EloundouEnyegue and Shapiro, 2004; Marazyan, 2013 and 2011; Rakato-Tiana, 2012; Zimmerman, 2003). The reason is the difficulty, on a priori grounds to assess the welfare effects of growing up away from one's parents, as well as of a child's departure on siblings left behind, or of a child's arrival on host siblings.4 Yet, the prevalence of the practice and its expected increase, following notably the intensification of economic, health and climatic shocks, calls for better understanding its welfare effects on all children involved in it (Eloundou-Enyegue and Shapiro, 2004), and therefore, for the implementation of a rigorous quantitative analysis to complete the existing more qualitative one.5The existing quantitative analyses on the question have not yet reached a consensus. Indeed, the estimated correlations between child fostering and children's schooling vary from positive to negative depending on the group of children considered (foster children, host chidren, or siblings left behind) and for a given group, depending on the country analysed. Another reason why results may still vary' between studies focusing on the same group of children within the same country is linked to the estimation strategy that is used. The question of how to estimate the effect of child fostering on children's welfare is not straightforward. Indeed, child fostering, as a well institutionalised practice, involves households with specific characteristics that standard quantitative data (Demographic and Health Surveys, for instance) might not measure. As these same characteristics may explain both the household's participation in child fostering and its decision to invest in child education, a simple comparison between children involved in child fostering and other children might lead to a biased estimate of the effect of interest. Whenever it is possible, alternative estimation strategies should be used.6Importantly enough, the lack of consensus can also be explained by the fact that only the average effects are estimated. Yet, the effects of fostering on children's welfare may vary with the motivations for the fostering. According to Isiugo-Abanihe (1985), children are fostered out for four main reasons in Sub-Saharan Africa: to facilitate social mobility, cope with a shock faced by the biological home ex post, satisfy the labour needs of the host household, and strengthen kinship ties in particular between rural and urban households. The lack of data on the reasons explaining the entry and exit of a household's member explains the focus on average effects.In this paper, I investigate not only a new determinant of fostering in a child, but I also look at whether children who are fostered in due to this reason have different schooling outcomes than children who are fostered in for other reasons. …

This paper examines at the role of grandparents in Black South African families in raising their grandchildren. The available literature indicates that caregiving patterns and the underlying causes of grandparent caregiving could be very different between grandparents in Black families in African countries and those in Western societies. In the West, grandparents often step in to assume responsibility for their grandchildren when their children are dysfunctional from such things as alcohol, drug abuse, and mental or emotional problems. In African cultures, Black grandparents are more commonly involved in the care of young children, and that is why Black grandparents do not view grandparenting as stressful. In South Africa, where high HIV prevalence among younger-to-middle aged adults has led to a heavy burden on Black grandparents, especially grandmothers, to care for their grandchildren who are orphans. These Black grandmothers view grandparenting as ‘natural’ for them, amidst the escalating AIDS epidemic, to assume additional family responsibilities.

INTRODUCTIONOver the past few decades, the female labor force participation rate has increased remarkably in post-industrial societies (Brewster & Rindfuss, 2000). The shift in the female labor force participation rate has had significant impacts on family relations. Work-family conflict for both men and women has increased in these societies (Winslow, 2005). Some studies have suggested that the increasingly conflicting demands from the work and the family domains are responsible for the declining marital quality over time (Amato, Johnson, Booth, & Rogers, 2003; Rogers & Amato, 2000). For couples to adapt to these changes, the outsourcing of household tasks has become an important strategy to avert the conflict between work and family roles (Hochschild, 2003).An increasing trend of domestic outsourcing, including the use of paid domestic help and childcare services, has been documented in these societies (Bittman, Matheson, & Meagher, 1999; de Ruijter, 2004; Hochschild, 2003). Among the options of domestic outsourcing, the hiring of domestic help is now common among middle-class families in Asian societies such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan (Constable, 2007; Yeoh, Huang, & Gonzalez, 1999; Cheng, 2003; Voyadnoff, 2005b). In Hong Kong, for example, the proportion of households hiring domestic help has tripled between 1987 and 2000 (Chan, 2005). In 2001, at least onefifth of households in Hong Kong that earned HKD$40,000 or above hired a domestic helper (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2001).Despite the increasing popularity of outsourcing domestic tasks, the possible impact of such outsourcing on family relations remains an important gap in the literature. The contributions of hiring domestic help to the employers' family, such as averting marital conflict and improving marital quality, are often assumed in the literature (Anderson, 2000; Cheng, 2006) but are rarely examined with empirical data. This paper investigates the effects of hiring domestic help on the following two indicators of the employers' family well-being: marital conflict and marital quality. Analyzing data from a representative household survey in Hong Kong (JV=974) using the propensity score matching method, which is currently gaining popularity in sociology (Brand & Halaby, 2006; Frisco, Muller, & Frank, 2007), the current study finds only weak positive effects of hiring domestic help. None of the estimated effects are statistically significant. The data from this study suggest, contrary to some previous claims, that the effects of hiring domestic help on two indicators of family wellbeing for employers are far from substantial. Previous studies which assumed that hiring domestic help enabled middle-class families to enjoy a better family life may have been overly optimistic.PAST LITERATURE AND THE CURRENT STUDYHousehold La bor and Family Well-BeingHousehold labor plays an important role in shaping family well-being (Coltrane, 2000; Shelton & John, 1996). According to the ecological systems perspective, marital well-being is affected not only by characteristics within the family domain, but also by how couples manage the demands from both work and family domains (Voydanoff, 2002). Role strain and conflict associated with work and family demands can negatively affect the marital wellbeing if the couples do not have the resources or effective strategies to manage the conflicting demands and to maintain a balance between the roles (Hill, 2005; Voydanoff 2002, 2005a, 2005b). In contrast, maintaining work-family fit and balance can positively affect the well-being of couples. Nevertheless, managing the conflict between work and family roles has become increasingly difficult, especially in those societies where high demand from the work domain meets the lack of a family-friendly policy environment. Empirical findings from previous studies have already shown that the conflict between work and family roles is negatively related to marital satisfaction, and can lead to marital discord (Coltrane, 2000; Shelton & John, 1996). …