David de Vaus

Stigma or respect: Lesbian-parented families negotiating school settings

This article explores the interface between lesbian-parented families and mainstream society through the example of schools. Lesbian-parented families are an increasingly visible family form; they are diverse and complex and raise challenges for heteronormative social institutions. Based on qualitative family interviews with lesbian-parented families in Melbourne, we discuss the dialectic between schools and families. In many heteronormative school contexts family members were stigmatized and burdened by secrecy and fear about their family configuration. However, there were also a significant minority of family members who felt respected, supported and safe within the school environment.These parents and children were out and proud about their families, and schools had responded with acceptance in both the schoolyard and the curriculum. We discuss the contextual factors (including social location and family formation), impacting on and constraining the interface between the families and schools, and point to opportunities for change.

When choice in retirement decisions is missing: Qualitative and quantitative findings of impact on well-being

Objectives:  To explore the importance of choice in retirement decisions for subsequent well‐being.

Lesbian parents negotiating the health care system in Australia

Twenty Australian lesbian-parented families were interviewed in multigenerational family groups about the interface between their public and private worlds. Experiences of the health care bureaucracy were difficult, whereas many participants found individual providers to be approachable and caring. Three strategies were used for disclosure of their sexual orientation to health care providers: private, proud, and passive. Influences on the strategy used included family formation, role of the non-birth parent, geographic location, and expected continuity of care. Parents displayed a high degree of thoughtful planning in utilizing their preferred disclosure strategy in order to optimize safety, particularly for their children.

Divorce and the wellbeing of older Australians

ABSTRACT In virtually all Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries the number of older people who have experienced divorce at some point in their lives will increase in coming decades. While there is an extensive literature that analyses the effects of divorce on wellbeing, there is relatively little research on the long-run effects of divorce in later life. This paper uses Australian data to estimate the long-run impacts of divorce on the wellbeing of older Australians. Dimensions of wellbeing examined are social interaction and connectedness, perceived social support, life satisfaction, and physical and mental health. The paper shows that divorce has a long-lasting, negative impact on wellbeing that persists into later life for both men and women. However, the negative effects of divorce on wellbeing are largely confined to those who do not re-partner. An important difference between men and women is that for women who are divorced and remain single, the negative effects of divorce are found for general health, vitality and mental health. Furthermore, these effects are reasonably large. For older men, there appear to be no long-term effects of divorce on physical or mental health. While there appears to be some effect of divorce on perceived social support for both older men and women, the effects of divorce on social support are less pervasive in later life than the effects of divorce on satisfaction with life and, for women, health.

The Disappearing Link between Premarital Cohibitation and Subsequent Marital Stability, 1970-2001

Previous research has demonstrated that marriages preceded by premarital cohabitation have higher rates of dissolution than those in which the couple marry without first living together. Most of this research relies on data generated by couples who cohabited in the 1970s and early 1980s when premarital cohabitation was relatively uncommon and usually of brief duration. Since then, premarital cohabitation in Australia has become normative and thus less prone to selection effects. The period of premarital cohabitation has also lengthened and is thus more likely to provide opportunities to screen out unviable matches. This paper uses national survey data from Australia to explore whether, in the light of these changes, the previously observed higher level of marital dissolution among those who live together before marrying has persisted. It demonstrates that the higher risk of marital dissolution among those who cohabited before marriage has declined substantially in the 1990s marriage cohort and, after controlling for selection factors, has disappeared altogether.

Who Cohabits in 2001?: The Significance of Age, Gender, Religion and Ethnicity

In this article we report on the growth in rates of cohabiting as opposed to marriage occurring in Australia over the last decade. We examine the relationship between cohabiting and the key demographic and social factors of age, gender, religion and ethnicity. The main data sources are the findings of the 1996 and 2001 Censuses. It is argued that the spectacular growth in cohabiting in Western countries generally is linked to technological developments that allow the separation of sex and reproduction, the growth in employment opportunities for women, the declining influence of organized religion, and the growth in individualism. We are aware of the limitations of census data for understanding social and cultural processes but nevertheless argue that engaging in this type of analysis facilitates understanding issues that have significant policy as well as personal implications. These include comprehending why cohabiting relationships are less stable than marriages and what contribution, if any, cohabiting makes to falling fertility rates.

The Changing Living Arrangements of Children, 1946-2001

Widespread social changes over the last half century have been reflected in changes in family forms. These changes have resulted in increased family diversity which, in turn, is reflected in the more diverse living arrangements experienced by children as they grow up. This paper is the first to provide reliable national estimates of the extent to which the living arrangements of Australian children have changed. Using relationship and fertility histories from the nationally representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia household panel survey (HILDA), the analysis describes the changing patterns of living arrangements of 12,441 children between 1946–2001. Its methodology allows the examination of the different living arrangements experienced by children during the first 15 years of life and avoids the static analysis that relies on point-in-time estimates. Furthermore, unlike analysis that relies on official birth and divorce statistics, the present analysis is able to identify family changes experienced by children as a result of parental separation. Thus, it takes into account transitions related to parental cohabitation as well as marriage.

Health and wellbeing through work and retirement transitions in mature age: understanding pre-post and retrospective measures of change.

The capacity to measure change is essential in examining successful adaptation to ageing. Few studies measuring change have compared findings using pre—post approaches (employing difference scores) with those from retrospective approaches (employing self-ratings). Where this has occurred, differences have been attributed either to ceiling and floor effects or to the operation of social comparison (Choi, 2002, 2003). Our study compared pre—post and retrospective measures of change in health, health behaviors, and wellbeing over periods of 1 and 3 years among retirees. Retrospective measures were found to be more positive than pre—post measures. This discrepancy was associated with floor and ceiling effects and with a robust self-image, but not with recency, social comparison, or social desirability response sets. Pre—post difference scores have limitations as indicators of change, particularly where ceiling effects operate. A retrospective perception of improvement, combined with deterioration in scores, may result from successful psychological adaptation as people grow older.

Recruitment for a panel study of Australian retirees : Issues in Recruiting from Rare and Nonenumerated Populations

Studies of change flowing from important life-course transitions such as retirement are best conducted using panel designs that allow change to be tracked at an individual level. However, for many life-course transitions, sample recruitment is especially difficult because no sampling frames exist for what are relatively rare and nonenumerated populations. This article outlines the difficulties encountered and strategies adopted in obtaining a sample of older Australian workers who were about to retire. It explores the fieldwork problems encountered and the effectiveness of alternative recruitment strategies in meeting core sampling goals. Recruitment strategies are evaluated in terms of their cost, efficiency, impact on data quality, and ability to recruit difficult-to-find subtypes of retirees. The experience of this research team is provided to offer guidance and information for other teams as they seek to recruit samples for retirement studies or for other studies of rare and nonenumerated populations.

Balancing Family Work and Paid Work: Gender-based Equality in the New Democratic Family

For most parents, life is no longer a matter of being a parent or a worker--its both. The traditional gender-based family model was based on role specialisation whereby mothers focussed on family work while fathers were responsible for generating the income to support the family. While mothers were excused from earning an income, fathers were largely excused from day-to-day family caring obligations. But the emergence of the democratic family means that roles are not meant to be ascribed simply because of gender but are to be negotiated and shared. At the level of ideology at least, mothers are encouraged to participate in the public world of paid work and fathers are to participate more in the private world of family caring. While this new deal of gender equality is widely accepted in theory we have not been so successful in working out how to live the new deal. Both mothers and fathers have largely been expected to add responsibilities and work to their already crowded lives. Numerous studies have demonstrated that simply doing two full-time jobs (parenting and waged work) is extraordinarily difficult for any individual and results in considerable stress and can result in degraded parenting and degraded relationships. The demands for an individual in doing both roles has been shown to be particularly demanding on mothers who, despite taking on paid work, continue to do the lions share of the domestic work. The experience of the competing demands of family and of employment is not uniform. Many factors shape the experience. The workplace itself, the structure of the immediate family (partnered, number of children, age of children), the availability of supports from ones wider family and friends, the availability of childcare and many other considerations all contribute to the experience of tensions between work and family and the capacity to manage these tensions. The paper by Losoncz and Bortolotto (2009) provides a way of summarising the different types of experiences of mothers. Using nationally representative data they identify six broad ways in which mothers experience the need to manage both work and family lives. They describe the range of types including those who manage both roles well through to those who struggle rather unsuccessfully. Their research draws attention to both the variety of experiences and some of the factors tied to these experiences. As such it provides the basis for further thinking about how those who struggle with the balancing act might be helped to manage better. Men and women have experimented with many ways both to parent and hold down a paid job. Many of these approaches involve mothers and fathers sharing the domestic load more evenly. The theory sounds great. As mothers generate an increasing share of the responsibility for earning the family income so fathers are to play a larger role in domestic work and family care. But ample research has demonstrated that mothers who hold down even full-time jobs continue to be responsible for the larger part of these family responsibilities. Many governments have or are considering ways to encourage fathers to play a larger part in domestic and family caring responsibilities. Increasingly fathers of newborn children have access to either paid or unpaid leave as a means of both supporting the mother but to get fathers involved in daily family activities from the time their child is born. Sweden is frequently looked to as being at the leading edge of policies and practices to promote gender equality and sharing in parenting roles by both parents. Thomas and Hildingssons (2009) paper on the domestic division of labour between parents of newborn children provides insight into the situation in a country that is at the leading edge of policies to promote greater gender equality. It is sobering to learn that despite enlightened paternity leave policies that considerable evidence of gender inequity in relation to domestic work and childcare persists despite enlightened policies. …