W. Bradford Wilcox

Conservative Protestant Childrearing: Authoritarian or Authoritative?

Recent research on conservative Protestantism suggests that religion has reemerged as an important predictor of childrearing attitudes and practices. This research has focused on the distinctive approach toward discipline among conservative Protestant parents. No study, however, has explored the links between conservative Protestantism and positive parental emotion work (physical and verbal expression of affection). I suggest, paradoxically, that this subculture is characterized by both strict discipline and an unusually warm and expressive style of parent-child interaction. I review parenting advice offered by conservative Protestant leaders, which encourages parents to engage in positive emotion work with their children. I then analyze data from the 1987-1988 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) to determine if religious affiliation and theological conservatism are related to positive parental emotion work. I find that parents with conservative theological beliefs are more likely to praise and hug their children than are parents with less conservative theological views. Modest positive net effects of conservative Protestant affiliation are also found.

Living and loving “decent”: Religion and relationship quality among urban parents☆

Religious participation is linked to overall satisfaction among both married and unmarried couples in urban America. Less is known about what may account for the association between religious participation and relationship quality. We explore this issue using data from the first two waves of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Relationship-related behaviors (e.g., temperance) and relationship-specific behaviors (e.g., affection) can each account for the association between church attendance and relationship quality. Furthermore, religious participation appears to be more tightly linked to mens perceptions of relationship quality than womens.

The Social and Cultural Predictors of Generosity in Marriage Gender Egalitarianism, Religiosity, and Familism

This study focuses on the social and cultural sources of an important dimension of solidarity in contemporary marriages: marital generosity. Marital generosity is defined here as freely giving to one’s spouse by regularly engaging in small acts of service, forgiving one’s spouse, and displaying high levels of affection and respect. Using recent data from a national sample, the Survey of Marital Generosity (N = 1,368 couples), we explored the associations between gender egalitarianism, familism, religiosity, and generous behavior among spouses aged 18 to 45. Our results suggest that domestic gender egalitarianism—where spouses reported sharing housework and child care—is linked to greater reports of marital generosity. Religiosity is also positively associated with marital generosity. Finally, the most potent predictor of generosity in this study is commitment, where spouses are personally dedicated to their partner and to continuing the relationship.

Bonding alone: Familism, religion, and secular civic participation.

This study examines the influence of familism, religion, and their interaction on participation in secular voluntary associations. We develop an insularity theory to explain how familism and religion encourage Americans to avoid secular civic participation. Using data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, this study finds that familism reduces participation in secular organizations. Moreover, religion moderates the effect of familism: specifically, religious involvement tends to increase the negative effect of familism on secular civic participation. Although religious involvement in and of itself fosters secular civic participation, strong familism tends to dampen positive impacts of religious involvement. For familistic individuals, religious congregations appear to reinforce their insularity within their immediate social circle and family.

Focused on Their Families: Religion, Parenting, and Child Well-Being

In recent years, scholars have drawn attention to religious commitments to patriarchy and parental authority to argue that religion?especially conservative Protestantism?fosters an authoritarian approach to parenting. Indeed, using data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), this study does find that religious attendance and theological conservatism are associated with higher levels of corporal punishment among parents?potentially an indicator of authoritarian parenting. But religious attendance and theological conservatism are also associated with lower levels of parental yelling and with higher levels of praising and hugging among parents, which are indicators of an authoritative style of parenting. Moreover, data from the Survey of Adults and Youth (SAY) indicate that religious attendance and orthodoxy are generally associated with greater parental investments in childrearing, more intergenerational closure, and more social control. In other words, conservative Protestants, Orthodox Jews, traditional Catholics, and other parents who regularly attend religious services are more likely than other parents to adopt an authoritative style of parenting that is beneficial to children.

Family Structure and Economic Success Across the Life Course

ABSTRACT This paper examines the role that family structure plays in long-run economic outcomes across the life course. Using nearly 30 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we find that youths who grow up with both biological parents earn more income, work more hours each week and are more likely to be married themselves as adults, compared to children raised in single-parent families. Many of these differences continue to be statistically significant even after we control for family income experienced as an adolescent. In addition, the implied size of the income transfer that children growing up with a single parent to equalize lifetime economic outcomes would need—about

One Nation, Divided: Culture, Civic Institutions, and the Marriage Divide

42,000—is markedly larger than the income transfers now available to families in USA.

Making the Grade: Family Structure and Children’s Educational Participation in Colombia, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru & Uruguay

Summary:Since the 1960s, the United States has witnessed a dramatic retreat from marriage, marked by divorce, cohabitation, single parenthood, and lower overall marriage rates. Marriage is now less likely to anchor adults’ lives or provide a stable framework for childrearing, especially among poor and working-class Americans.Much research on the retreat from marriage has focused on its economic foundations. Bradford Wilcox, Nicholas Wolfinger, and Charles Stokes take a different tack, exploring cultural factors that may have contributed to the retreat from marriage and the growing class divide in marriage. These include growing individualism and the waning of a family-oriented ethos, the rise of a “capstone” model of marriage, and the decline of civil society.These cultural and civic trends have been especially consequential for poorer American families. Yet if we take into account cultural factors like adolescent attitudes toward single parenthood and the structure of the family in which they grew up, the authors find, the class divide in nonmarital childbearing among U.S. young women is reduced by about one-fifth. For example, compared to their peers from less-educated homes, adolescent girls with college-educated parents are more likely to hold marriage-friendly attitudes and to be raised in an intact, married home, factors that reduce their risk of having a child outside of marriage.Wilcox, Wolfinger, and Stokes conclude by outlining public policy changes and civic and cultural reforms that might strengthen family life and marriage across the country, especially among poor and working-class families.

Give and You Shall Receive? Generosity, Sacrifice, & Marital Quality

Research in the U.S. and much of the developed world suggests that children in intact, twoparent households typically do better on educational outcomes than do children in singleparent and step-family households. While studies in the developed world generally indicate that family structure influences educational outcomes, less is known about whether children living with their two biological parents in the developing world have better educational outcomes, all things being equal, than children in step- or single-parent families, or children living in households without a biological parent. This is an important gap in the literature because step- and single-parent families are becoming more common in much of the developing world. Using data drawn from Demographic and Health Surveys in six countries (Colombia, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, & Peru) and from the Continuous Household Survey in Uruguay, we find that secondary-school-age children are more likely to participate in schooling if they live with at least one biological parent. Moreover, children in Colombia and Uruguay are also more likely to be enrolled in school if they live with two parents.

The Family Foundation: What Do Class and Family Structure Have to Do with the Transition to Adulthood?

This study seeks to determine if spouses who reject the individualistic tenor of contemporary life by embracing a spirit of generosity and sacrifice in their marriages enjoy higher-quality marriages than their peers who do not. Relying on data from the new, nationally representative Survey of Marital Generosity (N=3,146), we found that for both husbands and wives, generosity — defined here as small acts of kindness, regular displays of affection and respect, and a willingness to forgive one’s spouse their faults and failings — was positively associated with marital satisfaction and negatively associated with marital conflict and perceived divorce likelihood. However, the association between making major sacrifices and marital quality varied by gender. Uniformly, wives who reported making major sacrifices for their husband were less satisfied in their marriages. But for husbands, this association depended on their levels of satisfaction with sacrificing. The more satisfied husbands reported being with sacrificing for their wives, the less making a major sacrifice for their wife was associated with lower marital satisfaction. Overall, then, regular expressions of generosity, but not major acts of sacrifice, are linked to higher quality marriages among contemporary spouses (aged 18-55).