Linda J. Beckman

A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF ANTECEDENTS OF YOUNG COUPLES' FERTILITY DECISIONS AND OUTCOMES

Longitudinal survey data from 509 couples who at Time 1 interview had recently married or had their first child did not support the hypothesis that demographic factors influence fertility intentions, decisions, and outcomes only indirectly through their effects on attitudes and motivations. Husbands’ and wives’ attitudes exerted reciprocal influence on one another. However, while husbands’ sex-role traditionalism and motivation for parenthood strongly influenced wives’ traditionalism and motivation in the case of recently married couples, this pattern was reversed for riew parents. Birth control use was directly affected by wives’ fertility intentions, but not by husbands’ intentions. Difficulties in examining couple interaction variables such as relative power and the possible limitations of fitting these data to a complex theoretical model using LISREL are discussed.

The Relative Rewards and Costs of Parenthood and Employment for Employed Women

The perceived satisfactions and costs of parenthood and employment were examined and categorized for 123 professional and nonprofessional married women aged 28 to 39 who were employed full-time. High perceived role conflict between parenting and employment was associated with both lower parity and professional status. Women with large families more highly valued the companionship aspects of children and liked children more than did other women. Nonprofessionals were more concerned about extrinsic characteristics of the job (e.g., money), while professionals were more concerned about intrinsic factors (e.g., mental stimulation) and were more likely to see children as interfering with employment.

The More You Have, the More You Do: The Relationship Between Wife's Employment, Sex‐Role Attitudes, and Household Behavior

This study explores the relationship between wifes employment, sex-role traditionalism, and the reported division of household tasks and decisions. Data were collected from three samples of currently married women between the ages of 18 and 49 in Los Angeles County. Sex-role traditionalism was positively related to wives’ relative performance of feminine tasks, but generally unrelated to masculine task performance and decision-making between spouses. Employed or professional women took primary responsibility for relatively fewer feminine tasks than did nonemployed or nonprofessional women. The findings suggest that despite differences among women in sex-role traditionalism and employment status, most women say that they and their spouses divide tasks in a traditional sex-role fashion.

The Perceived Determinants and Consequences of Alcohol Consumption among Young Women Heavy Drinkers

Heavy-drinking college-aged women were compared with normal-drinking women on the perceived determinants and consequences of their drinking. Heavy drinkers generally believed they drank for inadequacy and escapist reasons, while normal drinkers drank for reasons of sociability. Similarities in these beliefs were found between the heavy drinkers and a group of adult women in treatment for alcoholism.

Causal attributions of teachers and parents regarding children's performance†

Nine upper elementary teachers assigned equal numbers of children from their own classrooms to three performance categories: Low Performance, Moderate Performance and High Performance. A childs teacher and his or her parent (usually the mother) then completed structured and open-ended questions regarding the reasons why the child performed as he did. While teachers rated childs ability, own teaching, and mother, father and peer influence higher and other reasons (e.g., health, situational characteristics) lower for high performing than for low performing children on structured questions, parents of children in the different conditions did not differ significantly in their ratings on each factor. On both open-ended and structured questions, for all performance levels, teaching was rated as more important by parents than by teachers.

The Relative Rewards and Costs of Childlessness for Older Women

Currently married or widowed women aged 60–75 (N = 719), either childless or with one or more children, were interviewed about advantages and disadvantages of childlessness and about other family-related and social areas. Results indicate that childless older women did not conform to a stereotype of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Respondents with and without children valued the rewards of their particular lifestyle and perceived costs in the other.

Perceived satisfactions and costs of motherhood and employment among married women

A country-representative sample of married women in the United States aged 18-40 were interviewed regarding their perceptions of the satisfactions and costs of parenthood and employment. The samples mean family income before taxes for 1973 was about

Examination of contraceptive perceptions and usage among Los Angeles County women

17500; they had an average of 12.44 years of education. 94% of the women had been employed at some time and 47.4% were currently employed. 84% were mothers and 69.8% reported that they had completed their childbearing. Women who saw interference with employment as an important cost of children had fewer children than did women who perceived interference with employment as an unimportant cost of children yet neither group rated interference with employment as a particularly important cost of parenthood. It had the 2nd lowest rating overall. When interference with employment was considered as a cost of additional children those who saw interference with employment as a more important cost of additional parenthood wanted fewer children than did other women. Contrary to prediction among women with parities other than zero those who perceived childrens interfering with employment as a more important cost of parenthood are likely to have more rather than fewer children suggesting that for women with children beliefs that children interfere with employment are based on experience rather than on pre-existing dispositions. Interference with employment was found to be a more important cost of an additional child for women who are employed than for non-employed women. Those women who saw negative effects on the children and less time to spend with the children as important costs of employment were less likely to be employed than were other women.

Exchange Theory and Fertility-Related Decision-Making

Contraceptive perceptions and usage of 583 married women in Los Angeles County (California) aged 18-49 are examined. Respondents perceived vasectomy as the most positive method of birth control in terms of its effectiveness safety interference with enjoyment convenience and overall desirability. The pill was rated 2nd on the same criteria followed by the IUD and the diaphragm. The most widely used method of birth control currently in use was the pill (29.5% of contraceptive users) followed by vasectomy (18%) and IUD (14%). Only 4.7% of women surveyed reported currently using the diaphragm. Women who had at one time used a contraceptive method generally perceived it more favorably than those who had never used it and current users of a method were found to rate it the most favorably. The exception to this was the diaphragm where those who had used it perceived it as being less convenient than nonusers. The findings suggest that only a small proportion of the variance in contraceptive usage can be explained by a methods perceived attributes. Multivariate analyses showed safety and convenience to be the variables most closely related to overall desirability.

Beliefs about the causes of alcohol-related problems among alcoholic and nonalcoholic women

Summary The rewards and costs of parenthood and employment were examined for 123 professional and nonprofessional currently married employed women in their late childbearing years. Individual rewards and costs were combined into overall indices of satisfaction with parenthood and employment and motivation for additional parenthood. General satisfaction with parenthood increased and the general costs of parenthood decreased with number of children. However, motivation for additional children decreased as family size increased.