Search

Living on the Edge: An American Generation’s Journey through the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2021) tells the story of the rarely studied 1900 generation, from their social origins to their old age, as they coped with and adapted to the revolutionary changes of the last century. Using longitudinal data from the Berkeley Guidance Study, the authors followed 420 parents (210 couples) born between 1885 and 1908, all of whom had children born in Berkeley between 1928–29. The analyses, which often challenge conventional wisdom, reveal their status as a “hinge generation,” or bridge, between past and present in their educational, work, and family experiences. Following highlights from the authors, four scholars offer critical commentary on the book. Matt Nelson addresses challenges related to analyzing kinship networks and patterns of economic assistance across the Great Depression era, pointing to measurement limitations that obscure important forms of aid. Kelly Condit-Shrestha raises concerns related to race and ethnicity, especially the absence of Black, American Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Hispanic persons in the original study, as well as to westward migration, American Empire, and white-settler colonialism. Silvia Pedraza addresses crucial social class differences (middle class versus working class) in the expectations and experiences of women, calling for greater clarity in the relationship between women’s roles and notions of “respectability.” Finally, Evan Roberts takes up some of the complex methodological issues involved in leveraging historical data to understand the life course and identifying the uniquely disruptive nature of social change across generations and countries.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a promising tool for HIV prevention during pregnancy. With increasing rollout in antenatal settings, counselling strategies to help pregnant women make appropriate decisions about PrEP use are needed. Understanding women's motivations and concerns for PrEP use-and how these inform their decision making and feelings about the decision to start PrEP-are critical to inform these strategies.We conducted a convergent mixed-methods study from June 2020 to June 2021 in the context of a PrEP adherence support trial among HIV-negative pregnant women in Lilongwe, Malawi. Two hundred women completed a survey reporting their motivations and concerns about PrEP use, and their feelings about the decision to start PrEP (Decisional Regret Scale). Thirty women completed in-depth interviews to better understand the decision-making process, including motivations and concerns weighed in women's decision to use PrEP. Analyses comprised descriptive and bivariate statistics, thematic qualitative analysis, and integration of quantitative and qualitative results.Women initiating PrEP during pregnancy were highly motivated to obtain HIV protection for themselves and their unborn child, often due to perceived HIV risk connoted by a recent sexually transmitted infection and/or concerns about partner non-monogamy. These motivations prevailed despite some concerns about safety and side effects, anticipated stigmatization, and concerns about adherence burden and pill attributes. Many women had informed their partner of their decision to use PrEP yet few felt their decision was contingent upon partner approval. Most women felt positively about the decision to start PrEP (mean decisional regret = 1.2 out of 5), but those with a greater number of concerns reported greater decisional regret (B = 0.036; p = 0.005). Furthermore, women who were specifically concerned about partner disclosure, who disliked pills or who had no perceived HIV risk reported greater decisional regret.Pregnant women were strongly motivated by the promise of HIV protection offered by PrEP and accepted it despite diverse concerns. A shared decision-making approach that centres pregnant women and offers partner involvement may help identify and address initial concerns about PrEP use and support prevention-effective use of PrEP during this important period.

This article presents an overview of how sociologists study the religious and spiritual development of adolescents, focusing on approaches to data collection, conceptualization of measures, and theoretical framing. With regard to data collection, producing context-rich information from a number of sources, including surveys, interviews, and ethnographies, is foundational for research that aims to present a holistic picture of adolescent spirituality. Having strong concepts and measures is also inherent to recognizing the multifaceted nature of religion and spirituality. With a number of concepts and measures available, sophisticated measurement approaches – such as multidimensional or configurational models – can be employed that capture the range of diversity in how adolescents engage with religion and spirituality. Finally, context-rich data and nuanced measurement tools allow for precise theorizing about the specific factors that influence religious and spiritual development. In this regard, the theoretical contributions of a life course perspective have offered strong support that (1) adolescence is a sensitive time period for development, (2) adolescents’ lives are shaped by links to influential others and social institutions, (3) social locations create diversity in religious and spiritual outcomes, (4) adolescents exercise agency in their spiritual lives, and (5) the context of adolescent spiritual development is bounded by historical time and place.

This review discusses the state of theory and research on how and under what conditions religion shapes various adolescent outcomes such as health, education, sexual behavior, and substance use. We focus on the latest theoretical advancements with respect to the avenues through which religious practice and belief might play positive or negative roles in the lives of adolescents. We also summarize an emerging literature on the conditions under which religion has stronger or weaker relationships with certain outcomes. In the end, we call on sociologists to extend the study of religion and adolescents through greater attention to the religious and sociocultural contexts in which religiousness is experienced (e.g., religious tradition or congregation, gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and social class).

Religiosity's impact on adolescent educational outcomes has been widely documented in the sociology of religion literature. Building upon King's conceptual framework of ideological, social, and transcendent resources that are made available to youth through religious participation, we use qualitative and quantitative data from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) to explore how the associations between religious involvement and educational outcomes may vary among lower and higher socioeconomic status youth. Our findings indicate significant positive effects of transcendent and ideological resources on educational outcomes, especially among youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, but limited influence of social resources through youth's religious participation.

Prior research suggests the significance of religion for development and wellbeing in adolescence and beyond. Further, new developments and applications of statistical methods have led to ways of better accounting for the multidimensional nature of religiosity (e.g. latent class analysis), as well as the dynamic aspects of religiosity (e.g. latent growth curve models). Yet, rarely if ever are both features of religiosity incorporated and examined together. Therefore, we propose and conduct a latent class analysis using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to identify seven distinct pathways of religiosity that involve independently changing levels of religious affiliation, religious service attendance, personal importance of religion, and prayer from adolescence to adulthood. We also show how individuals' religious pathways are related to gender, race, parents' education, their own education, and family formation experiences in the transition to adulthood. Our findings inform the study of how multiple dimensions of religiosity take shape across adolescence and the transition to adulthood, and suggest a new way for measuring the dynamics of religiosity in studies of the impact of religion across the life course.

College selectivity is associated with numerous positive life outcomes, but research on the antecedents of college selectivity, including religion, is limited—despite a long tradition of religion and stratification research. Using survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N=2,093) and semi-structured interviews from the National Study of Youth and Religion (N=46), we test for and seek to explain differences in the college selectivity of students from conservative Protestant (CP) religious backgrounds compared to others. Based on prior literature and theory, we hypothesize that CPs attend less selective colleges than other young adults, and that this may especially be the case among women. Our quantitative findings suggest CPs do attend less selective colleges, and the difference is greater among those with better high school GPAs. These differences vary by gender: They are nonexistent for men once background factors are controlled, but CP women attend less selective colleges—a difference that is even larger among women with higher academic ability. Our qualitative findings suggest that these differences stem from young women’s different understandings of the purposes of college (general self-betterment versus human capital investment) which relate to unique strategies for balancing work and family, enacting altruism, and achieving self-satisfaction. These findings show the continued link between religion and stratification and, more broadly, culture and stratification.

This study integrates theory and research on household fission (or partition) and migration to better understand living arrangements following marriage, especially in historically patrilocal and primarily agricultural settings. Using panel data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study to analyze the sequential decision-making process that influences men’s living arrangements subsequent to first marriage, we demonstrate the importance of distinguishing among extended family living, temporary migration, and the establishment of an independent household. We find that community economic characteristics, such as access to markets or employment, as well as household wealth affect the initial decision to leave the natal home. Household resources and use of farmland, along with the young men’s own education, media exposure, travel, and marital behavior, influence the decision to make the departure from the natal home permanent. Our findings explain why previous results regarding household fission and those focused on migration have provided such mixed results, and we establish a new framework for thinking about how families and individuals manage living situations.

In this article, we examine whether mother’s and father’s self-reported religiousness relates differently to the timing of their children’s marriages. Conceptualizing religion as one source of cultural schema about marriage that is likely to conflict with other schemas for living, and theorizing that women are more likely to experience structured ambivalence over religious schema and their enactment than men, we predict father’s religiousness will be associated with children’s marriage in accordance with religious dogma, whereas the experience of structured ambivalence yields a more complex relationship between mother’s religiousness and their children’s marriage. Using longitudinal data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal, a primarily Hindu and Buddhist setting, we find contrasting associations between son’s marriage timing and mothers’ and fathers’ religiousness. This provides empirical support for theoretical frameworks that emphasize the gendered nature of religious identity and suggests the influence of religion on other aspects of life is gendered.

This article examines intermediary processes explaining how religious socialization and involvement early in life are related to the timing of first births for women in the United States. The theory of conjunctural action forms the basis for hypotheses for how religious schemas and materials operate to influence birth timing. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data and event history methods, the study finds evidence for expected family size, work–family gender ideology, educational attainment and enrollment, cohabitation, and age at marriage as mediators of associations between early life religious exposure (affiliation and attendance) and the timing of nonmaritally and maritally conceived first births. These findings corroborate other research identifying the long reach of religious socialization and involvement in youth, elucidate some of the pathways for these connections, and motivate further work to understand linkages between religion and family behaviors in the United States.

The structure of adolescents' families, and thus parental forms, in the United States, have become more heterogeneous and fluid over the past several decades. These changes are due to increases in never-married, single parents, divorce, cohabitation, same-sex parenting, multi-partnered fertility, and co-residence with grandparents. We document current diversity and complexity in adolescents' families as important context for rethinking future parenting theory and research. We also discuss how understandings of adolescents' families are somewhat limited by current methods used to measure characteristics of families. We recommend social network and profile-based methods as alternatives to capturing key dimensions of family structure and processes. Understanding the diversity of households and families in which adolescents are raised can improve theory and research on parenting.

Prior research suggests the significance of religion for development and wellbeing in adolescence and beyond. Further, new developments and applications of statistical methods have led to ways of better accounting for the multidimensional nature of religiosity (e.g. latent class analysis), as well as the dynamic aspects of religiosity (e.g. latent growth curve models). Yet, rarely if ever are both features of religiosity incorporated and examined together. Therefore, we propose and conduct a latent class analysis using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to identify seven distinct pathways of religiosity that involve independently changing levels of religious affiliation, religious service attendance, personal importance of religion, and prayer from adolescence to adulthood. We also show how individuals’ religious pathways are related to gender, race, parents’ education, their own education, and family formation experiences in the transition to adulthood. Our findings inform the study of how multiple dimensions of religiosity take shape across adolescence and the transition to adulthood, and suggest a new way for measuring the dynamics of religiosity in studies of the impact of religion across the life course.

College students’ “hookups” have been the subject of a great deal of research in recent years. Motivations for hooking up have been linked to differences in well-being after the hookup, but studies detailing college students’ motivations for engaging in hookups focus on single motivations. Using data from the 2010 Duke Hookup Survey, we consider how motivations for hooking up cluster to produce different classes, or profiles, of students who hook up, and how these classes are related to hookup regret. Four distinct classes of motivations emerged from our latent class analysis: Utilitarians (50 percent), Uninhibiteds (27 percent), Uninspireds (19 percent), and Unreflectives (4 percent). We find a number of differences in hookup motivation classes across social characteristics, including gender, year in school, race-ethnicity, self-esteem, and attitudes about sexual behavior outside committed relationships. In addition, Uninspireds regret hookups more frequently than members of the other classes, and Uninhibiteds report regret less frequently than Utilitarians and Uninspireds. These findings reveal the complexity of motivations for hooking up and the link between motivations and regret.

This study examines changes in religious service attendance over time for a contemporary cohort of adolescents moving from middle to late adolescence. We use two waves of a nationally representative panel survey of youth from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) to examine the dynamics of religious involvement during adolescence. We then follow with an analysis of how demographic characteristics, family background, and life course transitions relate to changes in religious service attendance during adolescence. Our findings suggest that, on average, adolescent religious service attendance declines over time, related to major life course transitions such as becoming employed, leaving home, and initiating sexual activity. Parents’ affiliation and attendance, on the other hand, are protective factors against decreasing attendance.

This paper theorizes and tests a latent variable model of adolescent religiosity in which five dimensions of religiosity are interrelated: religious beliefs, religious exclusivity, external religiosity, private practice, and religious salience. Research often theorizes overlapping and independent influences of single items or dimensions of religiosity on outcomes such as adolescent sexual behavior, but rarely operationalizes the dimensions in a measurement model accounting for their associations with each other and across time. We use longitudinal structural equation modeling (SEM) with latent variables to analyze data from two waves of the National Study of Youth and Religion. We test our hypothesized measurement model as compared to four alternate measurement models and find that our proposed model maintains superior fit. We then discuss the associations between the five dimensions of religiosity we measure and how these change over time. Our findings suggest how future research might better operationalize multiple dimensions of religiosity in studies of the influence of religion in adolescence.

Ethnographic studies from numerous societies have documented the central role of male circumcision in conferring masculinity and preparing boys for adult male sexuality. Despite this link between masculinity, sexuality, and circumcision, there has been little research on these dynamics among men who have been circumcised for HIV prevention. We employed a mixed methods approach with data collected from recently circumcised men in the Dominican Republic (DR) to explore this link. We analyzed survey data collected six to 12 months post-circumcision (N = 293) as well as in-depth interviews conducted with a subsample of those men (n = 30). We found that 42% of men felt more masculine post-circumcision. In multivariate analysis, feeling more masculine was associated with greater concern about being perceived as masculine (OR = 1.70, 95% CI: 1.25-2.32), feeling more potent erections post-circumcision (OR = 2.25, 95% CI: 1.26-4.03), and reporting increased ability to satisfy their partners post-circumcision (OR = 2.30, 95% CI: 1.11-4.77). In qualitative interviews, these factors were all related to masculine norms of sexually satisfying one's partner, and men's experiences of circumcision were shaped by social norms of masculinity. This study highlights that circumcision is not simply a biomedical intervention and that circumcision programs need to incorporate considerations of masculine norms and male sexuality into their programming.

Sociology is a discipline in which the idea of a multi-method research design has held credence for many years, far before the term mixed methods research was coined. This article charts the implementation and framing of this approach over time to better understand the place and state of mixed methods research in the discipline today. Several recent applications of mixed method research by sociologists are highlighted to demonstrate the range of projects being conducted. There are challenges to further development of mixed methods inquiry within Sociology; however, the current epistemological base of the approach—pragmatism—promotes the merits of a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches and the discipline is better for it.

This article examines how religion shapes family ideologies in young adulthood. Using the 31-year Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children (N = 909), we find relationships between mother's religious characteristics when her child was born and the child's own family ideologies in young adulthood. Further, multiple dimensions of young adults' religious identities are independently related to their family ideologies, suggesting unique influences of both religious service attendance and the importance of religion. Our results vary across time and family ideologies in interesting patterns, but relationships between religion and attitudes are remarkably consistent. From early in life, mothers' and children's religious characteristics shape family ideologies in ways likely to help explain relationships found between religion and family behaviors. Key Words: attitudes, family, intergenerational transmission, religion, young adulthood. Comprehensive theoretical models describing forces shaping family behaviors frequently recognize the importance of attitudes, values, and beliefs in the process (Ajzen, 1988; Fricke, 1997). These family ideologies are not fully determinant but contribute to a schema of available and preferable options (Swidler, 1986). Research has shown associations between family ideologies and subsequent family formation behavior (Axinn & Thornton, 1992, 1993; Barber, 2000). Due to the importance attitudes, values, and beliefs hold for family behavior across the life course, understanding how these ideologies are shaped over time teaches us more about what leads to a variety of family outcomes. One often identified propagator of specific family ideologies is religion (Christiano, 2000; Dollahite, Marks, & Goodman, 2004; Mahoney, Pargament, Swank, & Tarakeshwar, 2001). Various religions and religious subgroups have family ideologies that are directly and indirectly conveyed through religious dogma and structures (Edgell, 2005; Gay, Ellison, & Powers, 1996; Wilcox, 2004). Thus, religious affiliation, religious service attendance, and the personal importance of religion have all been shown to relate to various family attitudes (Mahoney et al.). This article expands our understanding of the relationship between religion and family ideologies in four key ways. First, most studies focus on one dimension of religion (e.g., affiliation, attendance, or importance) or create a composite, but we theorize about each dimension of religion separately and compare the relationships between each and a given family attitude. second, we take a life course approach to religious identity and its influence, examining how religious exposure in childhood may relate to religious affiliation, practice, and salience in adulthood, and may still have independent relationships with family attitudes in adulthood. Third, rather than focus on one family attitude or a composite, we explore how multiple dimensions of religion relate to six different attitudinal components of family ideology (from issues of sex and reproduction to marriage and household gender dynamics). These attitudes represent the main aspects of family formation becoming salient to emerging adults (Arnett, 2004; Rindfuss, 1991). Comparing how multiple dimensions of religion relate to each family attitude separately allows us to assess religion's role in attitude formation for different family attitudes. Fourth, we examine religion's relationship with these six family attitudes at multiple points in early adulthood: ages 18,23, and 31, exploring whether religion's influence changes over time. In the pages that follow, we theorize the relationship between multiple dimensions of religion across the early life course and six specific attitudes about family behaviors. Then we describe and employ survey data from the Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children, a two-generation, 31-year panel study with an 80% retention rate, to test our hypotheses. …

Much empirical research has been devoted to examining how early life socialization and experiences shape adolescent aspirations. This article adds to this body of research by examining adolescent educational expectations at a crucial developmental stage with a focus on ideational processes. The authors test hypotheses derived from the Eccles et al. model of achievement-related choices regarding links between the previously neglected concept of work-family gender ideology and expected educational attainment. Using recent survey data from children of a nationally representative sample of women in the United States, the authors demonstrate a positive relationship between gender egalitarianism and the expectation of attending a postsecondary institution for ninth- and tenth-grade girls and boys. For girls and boys, having more egalitarian views of gendered work and family roles makes one more likely to desire a college education and a graduate or professional degree, although the relationship is stronger for girls than for boys. The authors' findings suggest the pivotal role of work-family gender ideologies in shaping adolescents' educational expectations and more generally highlight the importance of ideology and worldview in the construction of status attainment goals.

Integrating theories about religious influence, religious homogamy, and delinquency, this study examines religion's potential for both reducing and facilitating adolescent delinquency. Analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health show that the more religious mothers and their adolescent children are, the less often the children are delinquent; however, the effect of one's religiosity depends on the other. When either a mother or child is very religious and the other is not, the child's delinquency increases. Thus, religion can be cohesive when shared among family members, but when unshared, higher adolescent delinquency results. These findings shed light on how family religious dynamics shape well-beingand more generally emphasize that the influence of religiosity depends on the social context in which it is experienced.

This paper presents an examination of how religio-ethnic identity, individual religiosity, and family members’ religiosity are related to preferred family size in Nepal. Analyses of survey data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study show that socioeconomic characteristics and individual experiences can suppress, as well as largely account for, religio-ethnic differences in fertility preferences. These religio-ethnic differentials are associated with variance in particularized religious theologies or general value orientations (like son preference) across groups. In addition, individual and family religiosity are both positively associated with preferred family size, seemingly because of their association with religious beliefs that are likely to shape fertility strategies. These findings suggest improvements in how we conceptualize and empirically measure supra-individual religious influence in a variety of settings and for a range of demographically interesting outcomes.

Religion and Youth SYLVIA COLLINS-MAYO & PINK DANDELION, eds., 2010 Farnham, Surrey & Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Limited 278 pp., £65.00, US$124.95 (hb), £17.99, US$34.95 ISBN 978–0–7546–67...

This paper describes how the salience of research findings can be enhanced by combining survey and ethnographic methods to draw insights from anomalous cases. Using examples from a research project examining the influence of religion on childbearing preferences in Nepal, the author illustrates how survey data can facilitate the selection of ethnographic informants and how semistructured interviews with these deviant cases leads to improved theory, measures, and methods. A systematic sample of 28 informants, whose family size preferences were much larger than a multivariate regression model predicted, were selected from the survey respondent pool for observation and in-depth interviews. The intent was to explore relationships between religion and fertility preferences that may not have been captured in the initial multivariate survey data analyses. Following intensive fieldwork, the author revised theories about religion's influence, coded new measures from the existing survey data, and added these to survey models to improve statistical fit. This paper discusses the author's research methods, data analyses, and resulting insights for subsequent research, including suggestions for other applications of systematic analyses of anomalous cases using survey and ethnographic methods in tandem.

Previous research about religion and childbearing focuses on childbearing behavior, yet is motivated by the idea that behavioral outcomes result from the influence of religion on individuals' childbearing dispositions. This article describes how early life religious exposure may influence young adults' childbearing attitudes and preferences as they transition to adulthood. Analyses of intergenerational panel data suggest that, compared with others, young adults with Catholic mothers, or mothers who frequently attend religious services, are more likely to object to voluntary childlessness, to feel the average American family should have more children, and to desire many children for themselves. The effect of having a Catholic mother appears to operate through the mother's own dispositions and behaviors. The effect of their mothers' religious service attendance operates through the young adults' own religious participation and the importance they place on religion. The consistent effects of early life religious exposure on subsequent child-bearing dispositions outweigh the effects of socioeconomic factors and point to religion as an influential institution in the formation of child-bearing preferences.

This article investigates the influence of participation in and exposure to voluntary associations on fertility-limiting behavior. Its theoretical framework, drawn from the sociological literature on social networks and voluntary associations, the demographic literature on program participation, and the literature on health behavior, delineates the mechanisms through which participation in voluntary associations is likely to influence permanent contraceptive use. The article draws from three data sources to empirically test the framework: individual-level survey data from couples residing in the Chitwan Valley in south-central Nepal; data on the neighborhoods of the Chitwan Valley collected using an integrated application of ethnographic, survey, and archival methods; and the authors' own ethnographic interviews in these neighborhoods. Empirical analyses show that participation in a range of voluntary associations increases permanent contraceptive use. Furthermore, living in a neighborhood with a voluntary association increases permanent contraceptive use. Finally, participation in different types of voluntary associations — including credit groups, women's groups, agricultural groups, and youth groups — appears to be similarly related to permanent contraceptive use.