Judith Treas

Attitudes toward nonmarital sex in 24 countries.

Attitudes toward premarital sex, teenage sex, extramarital sex, and homosexual sex in 24 countries were compared. Challenging the simplistic notion that a permissive‐nonpermissive dichotomy is sufficient to describe variations across countries, the hypothesis that there are distinctive sexual regimes with different moral standards depending on the type of sexuality was examined. Cluster analysis reveals that there are six groupings of nations which have similar moral standards. However, a variance decomposition analysis also shows that all countries included in the sample share relatively similar attitudes toward nonmarital sex.

Older people in America's immigrant families: Dilemmas of dependence, integration, and isolation.

Abstract Immigration to the US has given rise to a population of older people who migrate here to be close to their children. Although highly integrated into their intergenerational families, these seniors voice dissatisfaction with their lives in the US. Intensive interviews with 28 transnational seniors demonstrate that their dissatisfaction stems from the contradictions between high cultural expectations for family sociability and structural constraints on kin interaction in the US. Their dissatisfaction is exacerbated by factors isolating them from social contacts outside the family. Although mobility limitations and not speaking English contribute to their isolation, immigrant families play a role. Older people are sometimes isolated by heavy domestic responsibilities in their childs household, solicitous offspring who insulate parents from practical aspects of daily life, and by a collective family ethos that calls on aging parents to subordinate their needs to those of other family members.

How Cohorts, Education, and Ideology Shaped a New Sexual Revolution on American Attitudes toward Nonmarital Sex, 1972–1998

Data from the 1972–98 General Social Surveys document changes in attitudes toward premarital, extramarital, homosexual, and teenage sex. This analysis demonstrates the liberalizing effect of cohort succession but also finds intracohort change in attitudes as the birth cohorts age. Intracohort change dominated recent dramatic declines in disapproval of homosexuality. As theories of individualism and postmaterialism suggest, higher education, secularism, and relative income are associated with greater tolerance of homosexuality. Although the young and those who do not attend religious services frequently led the 1988–98 declines in disapproval of same-sex relations, the diffusion of permissive values from higher to lower education groups is also evident.

The Occupational and Marital Mobility of Women

The NORC data on occupational mobility of women presented by DeJong, et al. (Dec., 1971) are reanalyzed to the end of comparing male and female patterns of occupational mobility in the U. S. Both male and female occupational mobility patterns are then compared to patterns of marital mobility (from fathers occupation to husbands) of wives not in the civilian labor force. For the comparisons, all three matrices are adjusted to identical marginal distributions to eliminate the extent to which size of occupational categories of either origin or destination differ. The occupational mobility of women is found to be less similar to mobility patterns of men than is womens marital mobility. Thus,, similar patterns govern movement of both men and women from their origins to the status of male head of their families. The occupational mobility of the women themselves, however, does not follow the patterns of men so closely as DeJong, et al. concluded in their original article.

The Family in Later Years

Throughout most of human history, the family has been both the primary context of social integration for aged individuals and the principal provider of economic support and physical assistance to the elderly in need. Within the lifetime of those Americans now approaching old age, however, a number of dramatic changes have occurred in social structure and culture∔changes that promise to alter traditional assumptions concerning aging, the family, and social supports in meeting the challenges of old age.

The Great American Recession: Sociological Insights on Blame and Pain

The recent recession is likely to rank as the most significant financial crisis in our lifetimes, but sociologists have powerful tools for understanding this devastating development. Drawing on theoretical perspectives and empirical data, this article focuses on ordinary Americans who have suffered during trying times. First, one popular set of political narratives is shown to fit the sociological model of “blaming the victim.” Second, General Social Survey data from 1991 and 2004 are used to counter charges of widespread consumer opportunism and to expose the serious systemic vulnerabilities that existed for Americans before the recession.

Prestige versus socioeconomic status in the attainment processes of American men and women

This paper demonstrates the consequences to the researcher of choosing to analyze social mobility data with a prestige scale rather than with a socioeconomic index. First, the low intergenerational correlations reported for the International Prestige Scale are rejected when they are shown to be compatible with inadequate models of the processes of status inheritance. Second, the Duncan socioeconomic index is shown to be the preferred measure of status transmission in that it suffers from less random error than does the International Prestige Scale, particularly among men. Third, the occupational attainment processes of American men and women are described with socioeconomic scoring, and these findings are contrasted with those which obtain with prestige coding.

Trickle Down or Transfers? Postwar Determinants of Family Income Inequality

The expansion of social welfare has been promoted as one means of equalizing the distribution of economic well-being. Macroeconomic expansion has been touted as an alternative strategy for improving the lot of the poor. Focusing on the postwar era, this paper provides an empirical assessment of these two competing theories of income redistribution. For female-headed families and unrelated men and women, the growth of public transfers is seen to be the major force behind a reduction in income disparities. Only husband-wife families and men living apart from kin seem to have experienced any distributional impact of business cycles.

How Couples Manage the Household Work and Power in Cross-National Perspective

Despite many studies on the gendered division of housework, there is little research on how couples divide the work of household management. Relative resource theories of household bargaining inform analyses of who does the housework, but their applicability to household management is unclear, if only because management responsibility may be viewed as unwanted drudgery or as coveted control over family and household. Building on theories of power and exchange, this article examines the relation of relative resources and management responsibility and asks whether the partner who does more housework also does more management. According to 2002 International Social Survey Program data for 31 countries, three fourths of married persons report joint, rather than individual, decision making on children’s upbringing, weekend activities, and major purchases. Supporting a gendered relative resource hypothesis, women, and not men, are more likely to take sole charge of household decision making when their income is higher than their partner’s.

Does Household Composition Explain Welfare Regime Poverty Risks for Older Adults and Other Household Members

OBJECTIVES This cross-national study examines the poverty of older adults and their household members and relates the risk of poverty to macrolevel state approaches to welfare as well as to microlevel composition of households. METHODS Data on individuals in households with older adults for 22 countries come from the Luxembourg Income Survey. Robust cluster analysis relates the risk of poverty to the type of state welfare regime; the characteristics of the household head (age, gender, marital status, and education); as well as the households numbers of earners, older adults, and children. RESULTS Persons in households with older adults are significantly less likely to be poor in countries with social democratic and conservative welfare regimes than in Taiwan, an exemplar of limited social welfare programs. Controlling for country differences in household composition increases the differences in poverty risks. Living with fewer children, more older adults, and more earners lowers the risk of poverty, as does having a married and better educated household head. DISCUSSION Countries with more generous social welfare provisions have lower risks of poverty despite having household characteristics that are comparatively unfavorable. As Taiwan demonstrates, household composition, particularly a reliance on multigenerational households, compensates for limited state welfare programs.