JCS Focus | 国际顶刊《婚姻与家庭》最新目录!!!

# Article 1

Racial/ethnic differences in living arrangements, distant relations, and later-life mental health

Jingwen Liu

Objective

This research investigates associations between living arrangements and older adults' depressive symptoms and whether these associations are moderated by extended family, friends, and neighborhoods for White, Black, and Hispanic older adults.

Background

The drastic marriage and kinship decline since the 1970s has raised growing concerns about aging alone in both the public and scholarship. This paper adopts critical race theory to examine the social convoy model which argues that distant networks will fill in to protect individuals from stressors in the absence of proximal relations.

Method

This paper applies multilevel mixed-effects linear models to 2006–2018 waves of Health and Retirement Study (N = 44,304 obs., with 32,599 White, 7028 Black, and 4677 Hispanics).

Results

While married couples living alone have the best mental health among Whites, co-residing with both spouses/partners and children (the intergenerational coresidence) is associated with the lowest depressive symptoms for Black and Hispanic older adults. Moreover, strong social support from extended family and friends and a high level of neighborhood social cohesion can significantly mitigate increased depressive symptoms associated with living alone or with others only (people other than spouses/partners and children) for Whites, but not for Blacks and Hispanics.

Conclusion

This research challenges the paradigm that considers “married couples living alone” as a normalized family structure. It also emphasizes the “double plight” of Black and Hispanic older adults, who show both a disproportionate decline in family ties and a lack of supportive distant relations serving as buffer zones in the absence of spouses and children.

# Article 2

Intergenerational and digital solidarity: Associations with depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic

Woosang Hwang,  Narges Hadi,  Maria T. Brown,  Merril Silverstein

Objective

We aimed to explore dyadic latent classes of intergenerational solidarity with digital communication (texting, video call, and social media interaction) among older parent and adult child pairs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether derived dyadic latent classes were associated with older parents' and adult children's depressive symptoms.

Background

Previous studies have not considered how digital communication fits with the established intergenerational solidarity paradigm. Consequently, we know little about how the use of digital communication creates new types of intergenerational solidarity between older parents and adult children, and how they are associated with their depressive symptoms during the pandemic.

Method

Using data from the 2022 survey of the Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG), the analysis took a dyadic-centered approach and applied a three-step latent class analysis with 271 mother–child and 190 father–child dyads.

Results

Dyadic partners were consistent in their relationship evaluations for the three latent classes identified in both mother–child and father–child dyads: tight-knit traditional (strong solidarity with frequent in-person contact), distant-but-digitally connected (geographically distant but frequent digital contact), and detached (low solidarity). In mother–child dyads, mothers reported significantly fewer depressive symptoms when they were in tight-knit traditional and distant-but-digitally connected relationships, than those in detached relationships. In father–child dyads, adult children reported significantly fewer depressive symptoms when they were in tight-knit traditional and distant-but-digitally connected relationships, than those in detached relationships.These findings suggest that digital communication was beneficial for older parents' and adult children's psychological well-being, depending on parents' gender and generational position during the pandemic.

Conclusion

This study underscores the importance of childbearing motivations as early indicators of future parenting styles and child adjustment and sheds light on parenting as a complex dyadic process.

# Article 3

The link between singlehood in young adulthood and effects of romantic separation

 Lonneke van den Berg,  Ellen Verbakel

Objective

This article aims to uncover long-term effects of singlehood after leaving home by examining whether individuals fare better after separation from their first cohabiting partner if they were not immediately coupled after leaving home.

Background

Singlehood after leaving home offers young people the opportunity to invest in their development, and social and economic resources. From a life-course perspective, it is expected that these investments may advance their resilience to instability later in life. These long-term effects are expected to be gender specific.

Method

This article employs longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, following individuals over a five-year period around separation. Using individuals fixed effects models, we estimate life satisfaction and labor earnings before and after separation from the first cohabiting partner.

Results

This article finds a decline in life satisfaction after separation for all groups. Among men, declines in life satisfaction after separation were smaller if they were initially single and if they were single for a longer period, providing support for the resilience hypothesis. Among women, earnings after separation improved most if they were immediately coupled after leaving home. An ad hoc explanation for the latter finding is that initially single women already earned more and had to make fewer adjustments to cope with separation effects. The length of singlehood was not related to separation effects on earnings.

Conclusion

This article shows that singlehood in young adulthood may have a developmental function over the life-course, buffering some of the negative effects of separation.

# Article 4

Women's family trajectories after union dissolution: A comparative life course analysis

Sergi Vidal,  Maike van Damme

Objective

Changes in family dynamics due to increased union instability are gathering scholarly attention. Against this backdrop, we asked: How do family life courses evolve after the dissolution of a first union? And, how do these processes vary across socio-historical contexts?

Method

We deployed sequence and cluster analysis on women's combined relationship and fertility trajectories over 120 months after the dissolution of the first union using survey data from the Harmonized Histories datasets. Context-level variation was assessed by comparing a series of measures of heterogeneity in family life courses across separation cohorts (1970–2009) and countries (France, the Netherlands, Poland, the Russian Federation, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom).

Results

We found substantial heterogeneity in family life courses that we inferred from a typology of trajectory pathways. We also found relevant dynamics across socio-historical contexts. Post-separation trajectories became more diverse (between-individual heterogeneity) and complex (within-individual heterogeneity) in recent periods among countries that we deem laggards in the diffusion of union dissolution, whereas path dependencies in post-separation family paths could be identified amongst the forerunners.

Conclusion

We conclude that increased union instability across different population groups generally contributes to the heterogenization of family life courses, but national contexts are also important in shaping family trajectories upon union dissolution.

# Article 5

“We'll make it work”: Navigating surveilled living arrangements after romantic partner incarceration

Steven

Objective

We use the case of housing insecurity to examine how romantic partner incarceration results in increased and prolonged surveillance of women at home.

Background

Romantic partner incarceration prompts surveillance from the criminal legal system while simultaneously eroding women's finances, health, and family relationships. Less is known about how these symbiotic harms of romantic partner incarceration enable surveillance beyond the criminal legal system.

Method

We use longitudinal interviews with 35 (previously coresident) romantic partners of incarcerated men, showing how incarceration prompts unwanted moves for partners, how women manage housing insecurity following partner incarceration, and how they become embedded into living arrangements where they are monitored, evaluated, and controlled.

Results

We identify three primary findings. First, women experiencing housing insecurity after romantic partner incarceration relied heavily on their social ties (and, to a lesser extent, institutional housing providers) while enduring stressful and prolonged housing searches. Second, the homes that women move into expose them to increased surveillance. Women encounter domestic, caregiving, romantic, and financial surveillance. Romantic partner incarceration prompts large changes in surveillance among women who left independent homes, moderate changes in surveillance among women who left comparatively desirable doubled-up homes, and prolonged surveillance among nonmovers. Finally, women respond to surveillance by monitoring burdens on hosts and reframing stays in shared homes as temporary.

Conclusion

Taken together, these findings extend prior research on the symbiotic harms of romantic partner incarceration, how women attached to incarcerated men experience surveillance, and how doubled-up families sustain shared homes.

# Article 6

State-level safety net spending and educational gaps in maternal time with children

Margot Jackson,  Haoming Song,  Ariel Kalil

Objective

We examine how state spending on children is associated with the size of socioeconomic gaps in maternal childcare time.

Background

Persistent socioeconomic divides in the amount and nature of parental time with children have prompted consideration of the factors that mitigate inequalities within the family. At both the national and local levels, the welfare state plays an important role in structuring opportunities for children. Thus, it is important to understand the institutional factors that shape parental behavior. Yet, little research examines how the social safety net is associated with family processes.

Method

Using rich data on maternal time with children from the American Time Use Surveys (2003–2016), combined with longitudinal data on public spending in states on major programs affecting children and families, we examine how state spending on children is associated with the size of socioeconomic gaps in maternal childcare time.

Results

We found that higher levels of state spending were associated with significant increases in childcare time among low-educated mothers at both the extensive and intensive margin, increasing the likelihood of spending any minutes on primary childcare in a typical day, as well as increasing the number of minutes spent on childcare. In contrast, we observed no variation in the behavior of highly educated mothers as state spending changes.

Implications

State-level investments could meaningfully narrow socioeconomic gaps in maternal time with children.

# Article 7

“The children don't do enough”: Including children in fairness perceptions of housework

Marla I. Sarmiento,  Jaehong Hwang,  Allegra J. Midgette

Objective

The present study set out to investigate how all the members, including children, of nuclear US families conceptualize a fair division of household labor.

Background

The majority of the literature has focused on how couples perceive their family's division of labor. However, for many households, children are also present and potentially involved in the division of household chores. Thus there is a need to investigate how the whole family, rather than just couples, perceive and understand the fairness of the family's division of labor.

Methods

This study employed thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with all family members of nine primarily White US middle-class families (N = 33).

Results

This study found two main themes: (1) the kids don't do enough and that's not fair, and (2) if we agree and are happy, then it's fair. The findings highlight how children's involvement is considered in fairness evaluations, whereas a specific amount of labor is often considered less important than emotional satisfaction and agreement.

Conclusion

Children are seen as important actors in conceptualizing a fair division of labor. Generational differences highlighted distinct understandings about the possibility of equality suggesting that the role of the (im)possibility of a type of division may result in other factors being used to evaluate whether a division is fair.

Implications

Future studies on fairness perceptions should include both children's perceptions and expectations for their involvement by both children and parents, to better understand how family's approach conceptualizing the division of their household's labor.

# Article 8

“If I got it, she got it”: Black mothers' food provision and symbiotic mothering

Marbella Eboni Hill,  Simon E. Fern,  Rachel Kimbro,  Cayce C. Hughes

Objective

This study advances contemporary theories of motherhood, mothering, and foodwork within the context of poverty by focusing on the ways that low-income Black mothers engage interdependent culturally distinct mothering strategies in light of a porous social safety net.

Background

Contemporary standards for good parenting are increasingly resource-based.

As such, the intricate and tactical ways that low-income Black mothers manage to make food ends meet with little means and few resources are often obscured in favor of hegemonic forms of mothering.

Method

This study draws on 44 in-depth interviews with low-income Black mothers and grandmothers to examine their survival strategies, focusing on food provision.

Results

Findings reveal that these mothers prioritize basic needs provision, such as food and feeding, and achieve this often difficult goal by engaging a cultural toolkit that we term symbiotic mothering. Symbiotic mothering is constructed and reinforced through the collective processes of maternal exchange, mutual aid and resource pooling, and the intergenerational and horizontal transmission of cultural knowledges, values, and practices.

Conclusions

While there is a wealth of scholarship interrogating the ways Black women deviate from dominant mothering expectations, symbiotic mothering highlights the unique cultural skillsets these mothers actively engage to meet the everyday demands of mothering, particularly related to food provision.

# Article 9

Marital status and happiness during the COVID-19

Hui Liu,  Ning Hsieh

Objective

This study examines the long-observed marital advantage in happiness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic may have altered the marital advantage in happiness due to changes in social integration processes. However, this has not been explored in previous studies.

Method

Data were from the COVID-19 substudy of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (N = 2622). A series of regressions were estimated to understand marital status differences in pandemic happiness and changes in relationships with nonresident family and friends. Karlson–Holm–Breen mediation analysis was conducted to examine whether relationships with nonresident family and friends explained the marital association with pandemic happiness.

Results

From pre-pandemic to pandemic, married respondents experienced a greater increase in unhappiness than unmarried counterparts, narrowing happiness gaps. However, unmarried individuals, including cohabiting, divorced, widowed, and never married individuals, continued to report higher levels of unhappiness during the pandemic than married peers. These differences primarily stemmed from pre-pandemic happiness. After controlling for pre-pandemic happiness, cohabiting, widowed, and never married older adults did not significantly differ from their married counterparts in reporting unhappiness during the pandemic. In contrast, divorced individuals remained consistently more unhappy than married individuals during the pandemic, mainly due to deteriorated relationship quality with nonresident family.

Conclusion

During a global crisis, it is crucial for policymakers, healthcare providers, and researchers to develop innovative interventions to promote happiness and healthy aging among all older adults, paying special attention to those who are divorced.

# Article 10

Family and consensual non-monogamy: Parents' perceptions of benefits and challenges

Milaine Alarie

Objective

This study explores the perspectives of parents in open or polyamorous relationships with regards to challenges and benefits of practicing consensual non-monogamy (CNM).

Background

Studies show that about one in five people, both in Canada and the United States, have been involved in a CNM relationship in their lifetime, a proportion that is even higher among today's young adults. While we know that many of those people have children, little research has focused on the experiences of parents practicing CNM.

Method

This article begins to fill this gap, drawing on 34 individual semi-structured interviews with Canadian parents involved in CNM relationships and their partners. The author explores the benefits and challenges associated with raising children in the context of CNM, as experienced by the participants.

Results

The vast majority of participants argued that the benefits of being polyamorous or in an open relationship considerably outweighed the difficulties they encountered. Six overarching themes emerged from the participants' discourses, namely: (1) social acceptance and legal protection, (2) coming out to children, (3) time management, (4) reconciling family obligations and personal needs, (5) it takes a village to raise children, and (6) teaching important values to children.

Conclusion

Ultimately, this study shows that parents practicing CNM perceive their relationship model as mostly beneficial for themselves, as parents, and for their family.

# Article 11

Educational experiences and American young adults' childbearing goals: A research note

Karen Benjamin Guzzo,  Sarah R. Hayford

Objective

This research note describes the relationship between young adults' educational experiences and childbearing goals in the United States.

Background

In the United States, education is associated with later childbearing and fewer children, but the relationship between education and fertility desires and intentions is less well-understood. This article contributes to the research literature by illustrating variation in prospective fertility goals by education, focusing on the early life course in order to understand young adults' goals before they have been shaped by parenting and extensive workforce experiences.

Method

This analysis uses data from the National Surveys of Family Growth (1995–2019), a nationally representative survey, to study fertility desires and intentions among childless US men and women ages 19–24. Predicted probabilities demonstrating differences in fertility goals by educational experiences, from three sets of multivariable analyses (logistic regression predicting fertility desires and intentions, separately, and negative binomial regression predicting intended parity), are shown.

Results

Men and women with a bachelor's degree and those enrolled in college do not have lower fertility goals than those without a degree and not enrolled; if anything, more educated individuals are slightly more likely to desire (for men only) and intend children and to have slightly larger intended family size.

Conclusions

Education gaps in fertility in the United States are not attributable to differences in early-life fertility goals.

# Article 12

Childlessness and sibling positioning in upward intergenerational support: Insights from Singapore

Dahye Kim,  Christine Ho,  Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan

Objective

This brief report aims to explore the role of childlessness and its interaction with sibling positioning (i.e., birth order and gender) in upward intergenerational support within the context of Asian familial and patrilineal values.

Background

Despite the increasing rates of childlessness in Asia, little is known about how childless individuals deviate from or adhere to the patrilineal gendered practices of supporting their older parents. Singapore, a rapidly aging nation that emphasises Confucian familism values and patrilineal practices in guiding its welfare policies, provides an ideal setting for this research investigation.

Method

We analysed a sample of 475 Singaporeans aged 50 and above with at least one living parent from a recent nationwide survey. We utilised multivariate regressions to examine the associations between childlessness and various types of upward intergenerational support, with further heterogeneity analyses based on sibling positioning.

Results

The traditional patrilineal pattern of first-born sons providing the most financial transfers to aging parents was found among non-childless individuals. In contrast, all childless individuals, regardless of their birth order and gender, played a significant role in providing intergenerational support, particularly in instrumental and associational support, as well as maintaining geographical proximity to their parents.

Conclusion

Childless individuals in Singapore were found to shoulder the primary responsibility for supporting parents, thus upholding the values of filial piety and familism. Results further suggest that the rising prevalence of childlessness may contribute to the erosion of patrilineal norms in upward intergenerational support in Asia.

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