College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item THE WORST OF TIMES? AGING WITH LIMITED FAMILY TIES IN THE UNITED STATES(2024) Liu, Jingwen; Caudillo, Mónica L.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The drastic demographic and family transitions since the 1970s have raised ongoing discussions about whether older adults fare well socially and psychologically when they are increasingly likely to age alone in the U.S. Based on the social convoy model, the three studies of this dissertation answer this question by extending the focus from the proximal kinship ties to nonkin networks and broader social participation. Particular attention is paid to gender and racial/ethnic differences as demographic and family transitions are experienced unevenly by different social groups. The first study examines how family instability and the deviation from “normative” family trajectories are associated with older adults’ mental health. It found different levels of importance of the structure and instability of family for men and women of different racial/ethnic groups. Moving beyond family and households, the second study explores the substitution effect of extended family, friends, and neighborhoods in the absence of proximal relations. It reveals the “double plight” of Black and Hispanic older adults who may suffer from both a disproportionate exposure to the declining marriage and a lack of supportive distant relations serving as buffer zones in the absence of core kinship ties. The third study disentangles the population-level age and cohort trends of social connectedness, a more comprehensive indicator of individuals’ social wellbeing. It finds distinct intercohort changes in both the overall level of social connectedness and intracohort gender and racial/ethnic disparities. These trends can be partially explained by cohort differences in socioeconomic resources and health. However, societal changes that emphasize the significance of intergenerational solidarity, friendship ties, digital communication, non-religious social participation, and volunteering may play a more significant role. Taken together, this dissertation depicts a mixed picture of different populations who demonstrate varying levels of vulnerability and resilience against the quickly developing society. Therefore, it calls for both the enhancement of social welfare regimes and more positive narratives about unique resilience and strengths for women, racial/ethnic minorities, and socioeconomically disadvantaged older adults.Item Understanding Women’s Labor Force Participation in Sub-Saharan Africa Through Migration, Kin Support and Relationship Dynamics(2024) Kim, Seung Wan; Madhavan, Sangeetha; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Family sociologists and demographers have long maintained a profound interest in understanding the determinants and consequences of female labor force participation. Much of this research has predominantly concentrated on the Western contexts, albeit with a handful of remarkable works shedding light on the Global South, where is also witnessing a growing focus. However, our comprehension of the intricate interplay between gender, work, and family in sub-Saharan Africa remains insufficient and restricted. Over the years, there has been a steady increase in women's education and labor force participation in this region. Yet, many women continue to grapple with sociocultural barriers that hinder them from fully harnessing their employment opportunities.Particularly noteworthy is the mounting tension between conforming to traditional gender roles and meeting household needs through women's paid employment, especially in the face of increasingly challenging economic circumstances. This challenge is particularly pronounced among marginalized populations, such as rural and low-income urban population. My doctoral dissertation seeks to address three hitherto understudied issues: 1) examining the relationship between an individual's employment status and that of other household members in South Africa, and how it influences that individual's likelihood of future migration, 2) investigating the role of employment among kin members and the support provided by family members in facilitating women's employment in Nairobi, Kenya, and 3) exploring the dynamics of women's work concerning union formalization, motherhood, and livelihood in Nairobi. The dissertation comprises two quantitative analyses and one qualitative methods study, resulting in three papers that draw from two datasets collected in South Africa and Kenya.Item Gender-Specific Significance of Family Transitions on Well-being and Work Attitudes(2022) Hara, Yuko; Chen, Feinian; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Marriage and parenthood are major life events for many individuals. Marriage is linked with improved health partly through spousal influence on health-related behaviors including diet. Previous theoretical and qualitative research suggests a link between family transitions and meal patterns. Yet empirical research using a nationally representative sample to examine the association is scarce. And the issues of whether spousal influence on health-related behaviors can be extended to other types of romantic relationships, such as cohabitation, as well as whether the transition to parenthood is linked with changes in meal patterns, have not been adequately researched. Additionally, research examining whether the health benefits that marriage brings can be universally found for both genders across countries is limited. Family life events carry other consequences, too. Prior research also suggests that family life often has a negative impact on attitudes toward paid work, particularly for women. Past research, however, primarily relied on small sample interview data or cross-sectional data, leaving unclear how work attitudes change during adulthood. This dissertation examines the impact of different family life events such as marriage, cohabitation, and parenthood on changes in subjective well-being, health-related behavior (meal patterns), and attitudes towards work by gender. I focus on adults in their prime work and family life stages in the U.S. and Japan. By using fixed effects models and panel data, I aimed to estimate the average effect of family life events within individuals over time. I found that entering a romantic union reduces meal skipping, but the type of union matters differently for men and women. I also found that the transition to parenthood discourages women’s regular meal patterns, suggesting family ties do not necessarily facilitate healthy behaviors. In the highly gendered social context of Japan, contrary to previous findings from Western industrialized countries, I found no evidence indicating that marriage is associated with self-rated health for women. Additionally, I found that the transition to parenthood is negatively linked with men’s self-rated health. In terms of work attitudes, even when controlling for various job characteristics, I found that both marriage and parenthood are negatively associated with enthusiasm toward work achievement, only for women in Japan. These findings highlight the importance of country context and reveal that entry into marriage triggers shifts in women’s work attitudes even before having children.Item The Socioeconomic Associations with Women's Partnership Formation and Dissolution in Russia, Germany, and the United States(2021) Zvavitch, Polina; Rendall, Michael S; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three studies that evaluate how women form partnerships, leave partnerships, and the economic outcomes of those partnerships. These demographic transitions and outcomes are evaluated in three country contexts with differing political, welfare regimes, social history. I use longitudinal data from Russia to analyze marital status differences and trends in in poverty risk. Contrary to assumptions that unmarried mothers will have higher risks of poverty over time as welfare policy weakens, unmarried mothers and married mothers’ risks of poverty came close to converging in the late 2000s. Second, I use German data to examine educational assortative mating in East and West Germany. I use the Revealed Preference Model (RPM). First, from bivariate analysis of the SOEP, I find that among the people who are partnering, they are doing so mostly homogamously in the East and the West. Highly educated women in the East are still less likely to partner somebody of a lower education status. The RPM estimated parameters then showed that in West Germany and East Germany alike, educationally hypergamous partnerships were most preferable. Though the availability of higher educated partners in East and West Germany are different, the preference for hypergamy remains. Finally, I move on to the United States to estimate the divorce risk of partners of various education levels. I use the Survey of Income and Program Participation, providing accurate representation of the contemporary U.S. The model estimates divorce risk using women’s own education, men’s own education, and their relative education levels. It reveals several persistent patterns. Women’s divorce risk decreases monotonically as education increases, so highly educated women have the lowest rate of divorce. Men’s education, however, is less of a determinant on the risk of divorce. Relative to hypergamy and homogamy, hypogamous unions (woman marrying a man of a lower education status than herself) were more likely to divorce. This study supports past research that finds the female breadwinner model the most volatile when it comes to likelihood of divorce and continued support for this trend into the 2010’s.Item GENDERED INVESTMENTS IN CAREER AND FAMILY: VALIDATING A MEASURE OF MOTHERHOOD SCHEMAS AMONG UNDERGRADUATE WOMEN(2016) Savela, Alexandra; O'Brien, Karen M; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)One persistent trend characterizing many work-family arrangements is the tendency for women to invest more heavily in the family sphere compared to men and to compromise career pursuits for their children or partner. Discovering which factors perpetuate these gender-stratified investments in work and family is necessary because, along with investing more in the family, women tend to be concentrated in low-paid, low-prestige occupations. Improving the ability to measure how young women perceive the motherhood role will allow researchers to advance the study of women’s career development. Accordingly, the present study tested, among undergraduate women, the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Meaning of Motherhood Scale, which assesses the ways in which mothers are expected to think, feel, and behave to be seen as “good” mothers. The study found that the Meaning of Motherhood Scale, originally developed with a sample of mothers, did not have the same structure in a sample of undergraduate women, non-mothers. Implications of this finding are discussed. Post-hoc analyses were implemented to explore the factor structure of the Meaning of Motherhood Scale with undergraduate women and a three-factor structure measuring Involvement, Flourishing, and Traditional expectations of mothers was found. Tentative implications of these post-hoc findings, future directions for research, and clinical implications are discussed.Item THE ROLE OF IMPLICIT SELF-CONCEPT IN PLANNING FOR CAREER AND FAMILY IN UNDERGRADUATE WOMEN(2015) Silberberg, Ayelet; O'Brien, Karen M; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Married women are more likely to leave careers and take on domestic labor responsibilities than their partners. This contributes to gender inequality in the workforce. The current investigation sought to understand this phenomenon by examining factors contributing to career and family planning in college-aged women. A novel Implicit Associations Test (IAT) examined the degree to which implicit self-concept explains variance beyond explicit measures of gender in willingness to compromise career for family, and chore division expectations. Eighty-six undergraduate women completed the IAT and a computer survey. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses found no relationship between the IAT and other variables. However, participants expected to perform more chores than ideally desired, and a positive relationship emerged between egalitarian gender role expectations and egalitarian ideal chore division. In post-hoc analyses, high expressivity related to egalitarian chore division expectations, and willingness to sacrifice career for children. Recommendations for future research and practice are discussed.Item A Multilevel Exploration of Neighborhood Disorder, Family Management and Antisocial Behavior(2012) Lobo Antunes, Maria; Simpson, Sally S; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Tremendous research has been dedicated to unpacking the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and youth development. Despite these efforts conclusions have been generally mixed and it is the lack of consensus regarding the importance of community that has in part fueled this dissertation. Much of the research dedicated to examining community and neighborhood effects on parenting and child behavior have been focused on community structural characteristics. Even though there is much evidence to suggest that disorder can affect both individuals and communities alike there is a paucity of literature on how neighborhood disorder may simultaneously influence family practices and child problem behavior. Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) and borrowing from the conceptual framework developed by Furstenberg, Cook, Eccles, Elder and Sameroff (1999), the current investigation explores the relationship between disorder, family management and youth antisocial behavior by posing four research questions. First, what are the effects of neighborhood disorder on family management practices? Second, how do family management strategies influence youth involvement in antisocial behavior? Third, how does neighborhood disorder affect youth antisocial behavior? Fourth, what is the multilevel relationship between disorder, family management and antisocial behavior? A series of models analyzed using Hierarchical Linear Model indicate that although disorder significantly influences several parenting strategies, in the end, family management practices tend to have a greater impact on youth involvement in antisocial behavior. Parents living in disordered neighborhood are more likely to limit their child's access to the surrounding neighborhood which in turn is shown to reduce antisocial behavior. These findings suggest that protective family management practices can be effective in curbing youth deviant behavior. Moreover, the analyses also revealed a significant relationship between proximal mechanisms of antisocial behavior (exposure to violence and peer deviance), family management and antisocial behavior. In essence, parental efforts in reducing exposure to violence and peer deviance have a protective effect in reducing antisocial behavior, especially in highly disordered neighborhoods. In keeping with these findings, several avenues for future research are discussed, as are theoretical and policy implications.Item Bringing along the family: Nepotism in the workplace(2011) Muhammad, Rabiah Sahara; Hanges, Paul J; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study advances an organizational justice theory to the concept of workplace nepotism. I examined if an individual's perception of nepotism can be influenced by their cultural self-construal and how the different components of organizational justice (distributive, procedural, interactional and informational) provide the psychological mechanism through which they base their judgments of fairness. A 2 (organizational selection: merit, nepotism) X 2 (competence: high, low), X 2 (in-group, out-group) experimental design was be utilized to test this theory. Participants read a randomized vignette, which varied the level of the six important factors. They then completed dependent variables (fairness evaluations and organizational reactions) about each scenario. This study represents the first empirical investigation of nepotism through the lens of individual's cultural self-construal and organizational justice.Item Gender, Kinscripts and the Work of Transnational Kinship among Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Families: An Exploratory Analysis(2007-08-23) Forsythe-Brown, Ivy; Thornton Dill, Bonnie; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Using an integrated, quantitative and qualitative, research design this study explores the type, frequency, duration and circumstances of transnational kinship ties among Afro-Caribbean immigrants in the U.S. Focus is on how immigrants maintain kinship connections across international boundaries, the delegation of kin work tasks among family members, and the impact of gender and/or kin designated roles on these activities. Qualitative data is from in-depth semi-structured interviews with multiple members of four English-speaking Afro-Caribbean families, key informants and two group interviews among immigrants with transnational kinship ties (n=41). Quantitative data from a sub-set of the National Survey of American Life (NSAL) re-interview, an integrated, hierarchical national probability sample, is utilized to examine the statistical significance of factors that impact transnational kinship contact (n=101). The notion of kinscripts posited by Stack and Burton (1993) is with combined theoretical perspectives on doing and performing gender, the household division of labor, and literature on Caribbean families and migration to create a lens through which the activities and behaviors of study participants are analyzed. Findings indicate that gender, social class, family size and gender composition, parents residing in the Caribbean, and length of stay in the host nation impact the frequency, extent, and direction of kin contact among NSAL respondents and study participants with transnational kinship ties. Men were found to engage in kin work in the absence of available women in the family to perform kin work tasks. Additionally, the study finds that who executes the majority of kin work in immigrant families tends to be voluntary and closely linked to individual skill and personality.Item The Causality and Characterization of the Widowhood Effect(2006-08-04) Espinosa, Javier; Evans, William; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Researchers from a variety of fields have noted a sharp rise in mortality for widows soon after the death of their spouse, a relationship that has often been called the widowhood effect. Because of assortative mating, married couples tend to share many of the same lifestyle characteristics, so this result may reflect correlation rather than a causal relationship. In this dissertation, I attempt to decipher whether the widowhood effect reflects a causal relationship. The key innovation in the dissertation turns on the notion that some causes of death reveal more information about the surviving spouse than others. In the extreme, if a cause of death was randomly assigned, then these types of deaths could be used to identify the death of a spouse does in fact raise mortality of the surviving spouse. In practice, we cannot specify what causes of death are randomly assigned, but instead, we can identify those that are uncorrelated with observed characteristics. Specifically, I use data from the National Longitudinal Mortality Survey and the National Health Interview Survey Multiple Cause of Death supplement to create longitudinal datasets of married couples, aged 50 to 70. I initially use this sample to identify those causes of death that are predicted by socio-economic status (income, occupation and education) and those that are not. I refer to these two types of deaths as informative and uninformative causes of death, respectively. If the heightened mortality of surviving spouses is subject to an omitted variables bias, in single-equation models, I should find a greater excess mortality for informative deaths than for uninformative ones. If omitted variable bias is not a serious concern, I should see little difference between the two types of widows. In Cox proportional hazard models, I find for men the death of a spouse from an uninformative cause has only a slightly smaller impact on mortality than a death from an informative cause. The findings suggest a 30 percent increase in male mortality as a direct result of becoming a widow. I do not find similar evidence for women; in fact, the results show no marriage protection effect.