Teresa Donati Marciano

Male pressure in the decision to remain childfree

To examine the negotiations and resolutions of disagreement over childlessness (the childfree lifestyle), questionnaires were sent to 100 married couples drawn randomly from membership lists of the National Organization for Non-Parents (NON). Responses of 40 couples were analyzed, in a synthesized theoretical framework drawn from Thibaut and Kelley (1959) and sex role socialization theory. The pattern that emerged was: if it was the husbands decision to remain childfree and not the wifes at first, she was likely to come into agreement with him; if it was the wifes decision to remain childfree, only very rarely would the husband consent. The more likely result, if she remained adamant, was divorce. Because marital power was so much greater for the husbands, the childfree life-style as an alterntive marital form may not differ greatly from traditional marital patterns.

Families and Religions

The family until now has been the social institution most closely linked to religion. Yet, the extent and direction of these ties in the modern United States have been only sporadically examined. Explanations for what religion does in family and society are found in each of the three major theoretical orientations in sociology—structural-functionalism, conflict theory, and interactionism—as well as in newer world-system theory.1 The study of religion in the past 30 years, however, has been marked by a shift from structural to personal levels of meaning, from Parsonian to interactionist frameworks. Luckmann’s “invisible religion” (1967), which locates the functions of religion in personal meanings, and Bellah’s “civil religion” (1967), the cultural backdrop of religious symbols providing new legitimation for American unity, are major instances of the new sociological approach. These have, however, been challenged for their sufficiency. Lemert (1975), for example, questioned their assumptions, in which he saw a failure to elaborate person-structure relationships. Lemert saw the need to hold onto person-and-meaning, “but now in a necessary dialectical relationship to social structure which . . . retains its capacity to convey religious meanings.” (p. 104, italics in original). Another view locates civil religion as an activist dimension of religions (e.g., the Unification Church) that appeal to community-oriented youth (Robbins, Anthony, Doucas, & Curtis, 1976).