Jacqueline Scott

She's Leaving Home: But Why? An Analysis of Young People Leaving the Parental Home.

In this article we use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to build on existing work concerning the timing and the process of leaving home to the different destinations of marriage and independent living in the United States....We find that among recent cohorts the trend has been towards leaving later particularly so for men. Moreover young people are more likely to leave to independent living and are less likely to leave to marriage....We also find substantial [effects from]...factors such as race and region characteristics of the family of origin the young persons own income resources and contextual variables such as unemployment. In particular we find that short-term changes in characteristics of family background have an important influence on the timing and destination of departures. (EXCERPT)

Changing Attitudes to Sexual Morality: A Cross-National Comparison

In this paper I examine changes in men and womens attitudes to sexual morality across nations and time. First, I use time-series data from British Social Attitudes and the General Social Survey of the United States to examine to what extent there has been a revolution in sexual attitudes and whether the change in attitudes has continued through to the 1990s. In particular, I investigate whether changes in permissiveness are mainly due to period effects or to cohort replacement. I also compare the trajectory and pace of change in the two countries. Second, I use data from the International Social Survey Programme to compare British and American attitudes with those of four other nations with very different sociopolitical and religious traditions - Ireland, Germany, Sweden and Poland. With the exception of attitudes to pre-marital sex, attitudes have not changed very dramatically over the past few decades. Attitudes towards homosexuality are becoming slowly more tolerant, especially among women, but condemnation of extra-marital sex has remained high. Religion plays an important role in explaining both within and cross-national variations in attitudes and provides a powerful counterbalance to permissive trends. I conclude that change has not been as revolutionary as is often claimed and the demise of traditional values is over-stated.

Generational Changes in Gender-Role Attitudes: Britain in a Cross-National Perspective

This paper compares the nature and extent of change in gender-role attitudes in Britain with other nations. We hypothesise that while many of the changes would be similar across nations reflecting, in part, the increased importance of womens labour-force participation, the pace and sources of attitudinal change would be different in the different nations. Comparisons are made over the last decade between Britain, the United States and Germany. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) additional comparisons over a shorter time period are made with Ireland, the Netherlands and Italy. Data from the General Social Surveys of America (GSS) and Germany (ALLBUS) reveal that there has been a marked liberal shift in attitudes, with more of the change occurring within cohorts than through the process of cohort succession. In Britain, data from the British Social Attitudes surveys (BSA) reveal a slower and less consistent pace of change, with evidence of a growing gender difference in beliefs that maternal employment may be harmful to children.

Maternal employment and gender role attitudes: dissonance among British men and women in the transition to parenthood

This study examines how changes in gender role attitudes of couples after childbirth relate to women’s paid work and the type of childcare used. Identifying attitude-practice dissonances matters because how they get resolved influences mothers’ future employment. Previous research examined changes in women’s attitudes and employment, or spouses’ adaptations to each others’ attitudes. This is extended by considering how women and men in couples simultaneously adapt to parenthood in terms of attitude and behavioural changes and by exploring indirect effects of economic constraints. Structural equation models and regression analysis based on the British Household Panel Survey (1991-2007) are applied. The results suggest that less traditional attitudes among women and men are more likely in couples where women’s postnatal labour market participation and the use of formal childcare contradict their traditional prenatal attitudes. Women’s prenatal earnings have an indirect effect on attitude change of both partners through incentives for maternal employment.

Attitude Strength and Social Action in the Abortion Dispute

We develop and test several predictions about who feels most strongly concerning the legalization of abortion. Our initial prediction is that if those who hold a mixed stance about abortion are excluded, the remaining consistent supporters and opponents of abortion should show equal strength of feeling with regard to their respective positions. Using national survey data and several different measures of attitude strength, this prediction is disconfirmed: opponents of abortion are far more likely than proponents to regard the abortion issue as important. This finding holds true when religious affiliation is controlled. We further predict that blacks are less likely than whites to show strong feelings on the abortion issue, and this is confirmed. Finally, we predict that among pro-choice supporters, women will give greater importance to the issue than men, and this is also confirmed.

Family and Gender Values in China: Generational, Geographic, and Gender Differences

Previous research has reported on structural changes in Chinese families. However, questions remain as to whether/how social change has influenced family and gender values and how this differs across generations, regions, and gender in China. Drawing on 2006 data from the China General Social Survey, we find that values pertaining to filial piety are traditional, whereas patrilineal and gender values are less traditional. Historic events/policies provide the context for how social change can shape differential generational, geographic, and gender perspectives. Our hypothesis that generation, region, and gender associations will differ across the various ideational domains is confirmed. We find significant interaction effects in how generation and geography differ by gender in patrilineal, filial piety, and gender values; and higher education erodes patrilineal and traditional gender values but enhances filial piety. Such findings indicate that family values should be understood in the specific sociocultural contexts governing Chinese families across time and place.

European attitudes towards maternal employment

Uses data from 1994 International Social Survey Programme to examine how attitudes to maternal employment at different stages of child rearing vary across and within eight nations in the European Union, UK, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Considers whether a mismatch exists between belief in a women’s right to work and the “traditional” family ideology. Highlights a north/south divide in attitude and differing welfare policies and gender‐role beliefs.

Changing Gender Role Attitudes

In their introduction to the 1980 Women and Employment Survey, Martin and Roberts (1984) state that the previous 20 years had seen an explosion of interest in, and writings about, the changing roles of women. The changes are well known. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s there had been a significant rise in the level of economic activity among women. Most of the rise was accounted for by increasing proportions of mothers returning to work after having children, and having less time out of the labour market. In Britain many mothers throughout the latter part of the twentieth century have worked part-time, although whether part-time work was a matter of choice, or a matter of constraint, or some mixture of the two is disputed. Writing at the start of the 1990s, Witherspoon and Prior (1991) suggest that there is clear evidence that women are the key advocates for change in the gender division of labour. It seems hardly surprising that there is a sex divide in terms of whether or not people favour a traditional gender division of labour. It clearly works in men’s favour if women are both contributing to the household income and maintaining their primary role for care of the home and children. Yet, although the main focus of Witherspoon and Prior is the attitudes of working-age women, they conclude that, without changes in men’s attitudes to care work, occupational segregation based on gender is likely to continue. There is no denying, however, that the male breadwinner system has been in decline for at least half a century, not just in Britain but throughout Europe. Between 1960 and 2003 women’s activity rates, relative to men’s activity rates, increased from 44 to 79 per cent in the then 15 member countries of the European Union (EU) (McInnes 2006) whereas, as we illustrate below, in Britain, between 1961 and 2001, the comparable increase is even larger 43 to 84 per cent. The shift from male breadwinner and female carer model to double-income and single-parent households have transformed the established ways of distributing work between men and women. In policy terms at least, women are no longer seen as being solely responsible for family work and care. The expectation on the part of policy-makers today is increasingly that women will be fully ‘individualised’, in the sense

Quantitative methods and gender inequalities

This paper argues that concerns that the feminist agenda is better served by qualitative not quantitative methodology were based on a rather narrow definition of feminism and a somewhat misleading portrayal of quantitative research. Using exemplar studies undertaken as part of the ESRC Research Priority Network on Gender Inequalities in Production and Reproduction (GeNet), I show how quantitative analysis can forward our understanding of the processes that underlie gender inequalities. Quantitative approaches are essential to examine the processes of selection and exclusion that reflect and create gender inequalities as manifest in changing lives and structures. Quantitative analysis of longitudinal data is used for investigating dynamic processes and different patterns of gendered resource allocation in productive and reproductive activities; whereas in‐depth qualitative analysis is used to unpick the different national policy contexts for work‐family balance. This can help inform how quantitative researchers (some of whom are feminists) interpret what they count.

Changing households in Britain: do families still matter?

The decline in traditional nuclear family households, and the marked increase in the proportion of people living alone, or alone with dependent children have led some to claim that individualism has replaced the importance of family life. In this paper we use data from a large household panel study of Britain to suggest that this is not true. Regardless of peoples own household circumstances, family issues and events are clearly top of the agenda of what people consider matter most in their lives. Moreover, in talking about events that mattered, people are almost as likely to talk about something that happened to other family members, as they are to talk about themselves. Surprisingly, people living alone or alone with children are as likely to mention other family members as those who live in family households. Yet the importance of family does vary considerably by gender and age. Women give more importance to family events and events in the lives of other family members than do men. Young people are far more self-centred than older people but whether this is a generational or life-stage difference is open to question.