Megan M. Sweeney

Two decades of family change: The shifting economic foundations of marriage

Has the relationship between economic prospects and marriage formation in the United States changed in recent decades? To answer this question, a discrete-time event-history analysis was conducted using data from multiple cohorts of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience. Among women, results indicate growth in the importance of earnings for marriage formation between the early baby-boom cohort (born between 1950 and 1954) and late baby-boom cohort (born between 1961 and 1965). Evidence of cohort change in the relationship between men s economic prospects and marriage, however, is limited. Despite important racial differences in the economic and attitudinal context of marriage, key results are generally similar for whites and for African Americans. Taken together, these findings imply that men and women are growing to resemble one another with respect to the relationship between economic prospects and marriage, although this convergence is driven primarily by changing patterns of marriage among women. These results are largely supportive of Oppenheimers career-entry theory of marriage and suggest that Beckers specialization and trading model of marriage may be outdated.

Stepfather families and the emotional well-being of adolescents.

Although approximately one-third of all children born in the United States are expected to spend some time living in a married or cohabiting stepfamily, our understanding of the implications of stepfamilies for the well-being of youth remains incomplete. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this research investigates adolescent depressive symptomatology and suicide ideation in stepfather families, paying careful attention to variation in pathways of stepfamily formation. I test multiple theoretical explanations for the effects of family structure on adolescent emotional well-being, including perspectives emphasizing economic deprivation, socialization and social control, stress and instability, and community connections. I also explore the possibility that observed associations between family structure and youth well-being might be spuriously produced by the preexisting selective characteristics of stepfamilies. The results of this research point to a complex relationship between stepfamily formation and adolescent emotional well-being, suggesting both positive and negative effects.

Remarriage and the Nature of Divorce Does it Matter Which Spouse Chose to Leave

This research examines the ways in which decisions to begin and to end relationships may be interrelated. Using data from two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households, the author investigates whether knowledge of initiator status in separation improves our understanding of subsequent patterns of remarriage and union entry. Previous research and theories of divorce suggests that divorce initiators may perceive favorable prospects for remarriage or may be better prepared emotionally to remarry than noninitiators. Results suggest that initiators do tend to enter subsequent unions more quickly than do noninitiators, although this differential diminishes considerably 3 years after separation. There is also evidence that initiator status is a stronger predictor of remarriage and union entry among relatively older women than among younger women, suggesting that older women may be more likely to delay ending an unsatisfying marriage until prospects for forming another relationship are good.

The Growing Racial and Ethnic Divide in U.S. Marriage Patterns

Summary:The United States shows striking racial and ethnic differences in marriage patterns. Compared to both white and Hispanic women, black women marry later in life, are less likely to marry at all, and have higher rates of marital instability.Kelly Raley, Megan Sweeney, and Danielle Wondra begin by reviewing common explanations for these differences, which first gained momentum in the 1960s (though patterns of marital instability diverged earlier than patterns of marriage formation). Structural factors—for example, declining employment prospects and rising incarceration rates for unskilled black men—clearly play a role, the authors write, but such factors don’t fully explain the divergence in marriage patterns. In particular, they don’t tell us why we see racial and ethnic differences in marriage across all levels of education, and not just among the unskilled.Raley, Sweeney and, Wondra argue that the racial gap in marriage that emerged in the 1960s, and has grown since, is due partly to broad changes in ideas about family arrangements that have made marriage optional. As the imperative to marry has fallen, alongside other changes in the economy that have increased women’s economic contributions to the household, socioeconomic standing has become increasingly important for marriage. Race continues to be associated with economic disadvantage, and thus as economic factors have become more relevant to marriage and marital stability, the racial gap in marriage has grown.

Later-Life Employment Preferences and Outcomes: The Role of Midlife Work Experiences

In this article, the authors evaluate relationships between midlife work experiences and the realization of preferences for full-time employment, part-time employment, and complete retirement at age 63-64. Using rich data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, the authors demonstrate that the likelihood of achieving one’s preferred employment status is related to earlier work experiences including employment stability in midlife and self-employment, part-time employment, and private pension coverage across the life course. Despite large gender differences in work experiences across the life course, relationships between earlier work experiences and the likelihood of realizing later-life employment preferences are similar for men and women. The authors also find that these relationships are only partially mediated by economic and employment circumstances in late midlife, suggesting the need for further evaluation of the cumulative pathways linking midlife work experiences to the realization of later-life employment preferences.

The Association Between Retirement and Emotional Well-being: Does Prior Work--Family Conflict Matter?

OBJECTIVE This study investigates whether the association between retirement and emotional well-being depends on prior experience of work-family conflict. METHODS We use data from the 1993 and 2004 waves of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study to estimate linear regression models of 2 dimensions of emotional well-being-depressive symptoms and positive psychological functioning. We also use fixed effects models to investigate whether key findings persist after controlling for stable, but unobserved, characteristics of individuals. RESULTS Retirement is associated with relatively fewer depressive symptoms among individuals who reported high levels of work stress interfering with family life in late midlife. We find suggestive evidence of a similar association with respect to positive psychological functioning after accounting for unobserved characteristics of individuals. Among individuals reporting high levels of family stress spillover into work life at late midlife, our results suggest that retirement tends to be associated with better emotional well-being among men than among women. DISCUSSION Retirement may come more as a relief than as a stressor for individuals previously experiencing high levels of work demands interfering with family life. However, particularly among women, retirement may not relieve the burdens of family life stressors.

The perplexing links between contraceptive sterilization and (dis)advantage in ten low-fertility countries

This study investigated the association between contraceptive sterilization and socio-economic status (measured by educational attainment) in ten countries, using data from the 2006–10 National Survey of Family Growth and the 2004–10 Generations and Gender Surveys. The findings confirm that a long-standing association between socio-economic status and sterilization persists in the contemporary United States: female sterilization is associated with economic disadvantage, whereas male sterilization is associated with economic advantage. The latter association is found to be unique to the United States, but female sterilization is associated with disadvantage in most of the other countries studied. While basic demographic background factors such as early childbearing and parity can explain the observed associations in most of the countries, a strong gendered association between sterilization and socio-economic status remains in the United States and Belgium even after adjusting for these factors.

Understanding Sterilization Regret in the United States: The Role of Relationship Context: Relationship Context and Sterilization Regret

Although one fourth of sterilized reproductive-aged women in the U.S. express a desire to have their sterilization procedures reversed, the pathways leading to sterilization regret remain insufficiently understood. Particularly little is known about how cohabitation affects the likelihood of sterilization regret. This study used data from the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth to investigate how relationship context shapes womens risk of sterilization regret. Our findings point to higher levels of regret among women who were cohabiting, rather than married or single at the time of sterilization. Experiencing post-sterilization union dissolution or post-sterilization union formation was also associated with an elevated risk of regret. Together, post-sterilization union instability and selected background characteristics largely explained elevated levels of regret observed among women who were cohabiting at the time of sterilization. An association between regret and post-sterilization union instability persisted, however, even when socioeconomic and reproductive background factors were controlled.

Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70. By John H. Laub and Robert J. Sampson. Harvard University Press, 2003. 338 pp. Cloth,

of technology that the field of sociology certainly needs. The intricacies of how much digital technologies integrate, modify, or bounce harmlessly off of existing social practices is a subject that the field of sociology is beginning to investigate, albeit slowly. While Rheingold’s agenda is laudable, pointing out the possibility of the mobile Internet and other technologies to facilitate positive (and, in less detail, negative) collective action, the limitation of the book is its uninformed model of how societies work in general.