GEOFFREY McNICOLL
''Institutional Determinants of Fertility Change'' (1980)

There is no adequate theory of fertility which coherently links social and economic characteristics to individual fertility decisions and outcomes, and whose predictions can withstand scrutiny against empirical record. McNicoll proposes an approach to arrive at an adequate theory, drawing essentially on the notions of bounded rationality developed by Herbert Simon, the transaction costs theory of Ronald Coase, and the emerging economic theory of institutional change.

Structural explanations of fertility trends are problematic because they fail to grasp the dynamics of incentive structures. However, a careful analysis of institutional settings, covering both statics and dynamics, can produce convincing explanations of fertility levels and themes. McNicoll applies this idea to three cases: Guangdong, China, Bali, and Bangladesh. He particularly emphasizes features of the local organizational structures (such as kinship ties, village structure, and local politics) to explain fertility trends in these countries. This post hoc reasoning, which is the prevalent mode of fertility analysis, is not sufficient since it is not grounded in theory and it leaves much to be explained by the social scientist's imagination. In particular, this type of reasoning lacks three important components; An adequate model of individual decision-making, which will show how institutional factors mesh with conventional income and price changes on the one hand, and cultural change on the other in influencing decisions bearing on fertility
An understanding of the institutional change itself
Empirical measures of institutional forms and dynamics

To address the first point, McNicoll refers to Simon's concept of ''administrative man.'' Administrative man, as opposed to economic man, is an individual that does not recognize all the possible options available to him, his rationality is bounded or segmented by his circumstances. Accordingly, his behavior is satisficing, not maximizing. (Note: this same idea comes up in social psychology, in the Tversky article.) In the case of fertility, the boundaries of rationality depend upon how institutional settings and cultural patterns routinely tend to juxtapose certain sets of issues and to isolate others, from the standpoint of the actor. For example, a couple deciding to get married must consider the wished of parents on one hand, and issues of postmarriage family-building, interlinked economic behavior, and spousal relations on the other.

To address the second point, the transaction costs theory by Ronald Coase depicts the organization of production as a cost-minimizing arrangement of transactions defining the boundaries of firms; the firms tend to expand as long as the costs of transaction within it are not greater than the costs of transaction with the outside. From the fertility standpoint, a family can be seen as a social device for minimizing an array of transaction costs, a kind of miniature Coasian firm. In a Coasian firm, improvement in technology and managerial techniques tend to reduce the cost of organizing and hence tend to increase the firm size. In the case of the family, the change in environment may alter the balance of transaction costs within with the costs of transaction with the outside, and accordingly alter the family size.

Regarding empirical measures of institutional forms, McNicoll suggests, as examples, compilation of standardized quantitative information on local administrative structure, comparative tabulations of qualitative characteristics of various types of social grouping, and replication of sophisticated, quantitative studies of social change (such as Parish and Whyte's work on China).

McNicoll concludes by emphasizing a move away from armchair theorizing to a comprehensive theory of fertility grounded in empirical research.

VALERIE OPPENHEIMER
''A Theory of Marriage Timing.''

In this article, Oppenheimer links assortative mating (choosing your mate) to peoples' transitions to adult economic roles. She looks at how sex differences in marriage timing will change as married women's market work becomes more extensive, and argues against the idea that thedecline in gains to marriage due to an increase in women's economic independence is the preeminent factor in the rise of delayed marriages. She also looks at the relevance of job search models to marriage timing and their implications as the sexual division of labor changes.

She uses the search model to develop the following arguments:

1)Assortative mating is hindered by a relatively high degree of uncertainty about the important attributes people attempt to match with. Exogenous factors that affect the degree of uncertainty about the future and current attrinbutes will influemce marriage timing.

2)The marriage-delaying effects of greater uncertainty can be partially offset by relying on post-marital adaptive socialization. Greater reliance on only the selection process to acheive a good match should lead to a later age at marriage.

3)Factors that affect the timing of the transition to a stable work role should also affect marriage timing.

4)If the timing of the transition to adult work roles does have an effect on assortative mating, then highly differentiated gender roles will foster sexual differences in age at marriage. Moreover, the nature of the assortative mating process changes when adult economic roles of women and men start to converge. In particular, there is an increase in the level of uncertainty regarding women's long run attributes. Women's age at marriage can be expected to rise.

Job Search theory: an overview

Individuals decide on a minimally acceptable match expressed in terms of wage --''the reservation wage.'' How high the reservation wage is set depends on how much the costs of searching are offset by the returns to the search in the form of a better match. The greater the returns from searching, the higher the reservation wage and the longer the time spent searching.

Searching in marriage markets

This process is similar to the job search in some ways. People conceptualize minimally acceptable matches and weigh the costs and benefits of searching. But with marriage, there is a question of when the search is occuring. Other differences from job search theory is that the shape of the marriage offer distribution changes with age, the degree of uncertainty shifts with age (those who are younger are more uncertain about their furures), and there are different opportunity costs of early and later marriage.
The optimum time for a wide choice in mate selection is at a younger age; for availability of information about yourself and other people, the optimum time is at an older age.

Transition to work and Marriage timing

The assortative mating process will be affected by the transition-to-work process and its timing. Oppenheimer asks several questions which pertain to this. How have differences in traditional economic roles affected sexual differences in the timimg of marriage? What have been the effects of women's increasing economic activity outside the family? What are the implications of changes in these traditional gender roles?

The operation of marriage markets when gender roles are highly differentiated

Both Parsons and Becker (as well as other theorists imply that women's growing economic independence is the major factor in the rise of delayed marriage and marital instability. Parsons views sex role segregation as a functional necessity for marital stability. He believes in minimalizing the sources of marital conflict to maintain stability.
Becker, ''a new home economist'' views unmarrried men and women as potential trading partners. Women's comparative advantage in home production leads them to specilaize there while men specialize in the market. This provides the major gains to marriage for each partner. The gain from marriage is reduced by a rise in the earnings and labor force participation of women and by a fall in fertility, because the sexual DOL becomes less advantageous. This has resulted in the recent rise in age age at marriage and an increase in divorce rates.

Gender differentiated economic roles will, through the assortative mating process, promote sexual differences in marriage timing.

Marriage Market dynamics and men's age at marriage

Job and personal uncertainty affect a young man's short term marriage market position because they increase the difficulty of assortative mating. The young man's returns to marriage are also uncertain. Search theory suggests that high search costs lead to a reduction in the minimally acceptable match, thereby promoting an earlier age at marriage but also a higher probability of a mismatch. On the other hand, a higher opportunity cost could result by accepting a poorer marital match now that could preclude forming a better match later. This makes search costs higher. But if high search costs are only temporary, then young people might postpone marriage until more information is available.

Marriage market dynamics and women's age at marriage

Sex role differentiation makes women more marriageable at a younger age than men because there is less uncertainty about the attributes of women that are important to making a match. Early marriages in general are more dependent on the man's socio-economic position than the woman's. Greater opportunity costs of delayed marriage for women should make their transition to marriage much faster than for men and lead to more sharply decreasing marriage prospects with age.

Exogenous factors affecting marital timing

Occupational Type
Men working in blue collar jobs should establish their married lives earlier because their jobs (at least initially) are more secure that those over-achieving climb-the-corporate-ladder types. Changes in the macro-occupational structure over time toward a more professionalized labor force are a factor in the current rising age for marriage.

Young men's income position
The transition to a stable career for young men is still a factor in age of marriage for women as well as men. It is premature to conclude that the current rapid rise in age at marriage of men and women alike is mainly attributable to women's growing economic independence. Some or most of the changes are still tied to changes in young men's economic position -- just as they always have been.

Changes in women's economic roles and the operation of marriage markets

1) Search theory indicates that as women's labor market attachments have grown, schooling has become more important to them. The opportunity costs of dropping out of school have been rising for women.

2) Because women's employment is becoming more life long, the feasibility of using post marital socialization as a corrective mechanism is declining, placing more of the burden on assortative mate selection for producing a good match. This leads to a rise in uncertainty which may postpone marriage searches. Cohabitation can be viewed as one type of adjustment to delays in the optimum conditions for assortative mating.

3) Work can provide a desirable marriage market setting and also provides funds for an attractive lifestyle and recreation which further enlarge the boundaries of the marriage market. Therefore, the age at marriage will rise.

4) Greater economic independence subsidizes searching in marriage markets and reduces economic penalties associated with non marriage. This encourages risk taking by setting higher minimum levels of acceptability for prospective spouse. Leads to later marriages.

During this transformation of women's economic roles in our society, greater delays in marriage and higher rates of marital instability may be observed than will be the case once the situation has stabilized again . (During the transition time, women's roles in work force are not taken as seriously, and if a woman develops work attachments after marriage this could lead to a desire to re negotiate the marriage bargain).

Conclusion

Changes in gender roles will lead to corresponding changes in age at marriage in part because a woman's more extensive labor market attachment adds another set of exogenous factors requiring adaptations by husband and wife. This increases the importance of marital selection over post-marital socialization in fostering a good match. It also raises the level of uncertainty about women's attributes so it more closely resembles that of males. Both these changes should lead to marriage delays.
Oppenheimer questions the reduced-gains-to-marriage argument as a major explanation for recent trends in marriage behavior. Is women's growing economic independence reducing gains to marriage or is it primarily the gains to marriage which have declined?
The search theoretic framework reveals how greater economic independence can reduce gains to marriage in general. This approach provides a number of less apocalyptic and more theoretically and empirically challenging alternatives to the ''reduced gains'' hypothesis.

??? Oppenheimer also argues at the beginning of the conclusion that despite changes in women's labor market behavior, the age at marriage for both sexes will be heavily dependent on the timing of young men's entry into relatively stable economic careers. I guess this isn't completely contradictory with her other argument in this conclusion (stated above), but it doesn't mesh that well. I found this whole article very confusing; I'm not sure how well I understood it.

SAMUEL PRESTON
''Urban growth in developing countries: A demographic reappraisal''

Governments as well as scholars are concerned with issues as population distribution, particularly rates of rural-urban migration. Some sources of this political interest may be: uneven distribution patterns and net rural-urban migration may be a product of unjustifiable regional and sectoral distortions in patterns of development; political administrative difficulties of planning local public services in the face of unplanned changes in the population of users; and the belief that dispersed and largely invisible rural masses tend to make fewer demands and are less of a threat to the established social order than urbanites.

Citing the findings of a 116 country United Nations study, Preston highlights several conclusions:

1) The rate of change in the proportion urban in developing countries is not exceptionally rapid by historical standards; rather it is the growth rates of urban populations that represents an unprecedented phenomenon. In general, rural outmigration is fastest in countries whose economic performance allows the best possibilities for accommodating the exodus. Preston notes that constant proportional differences between urban and rural incomes would suggest that rural-urban migration should be higher in richer (more developed) countries - evidence does support this position.

2) Urban growth through most of the developing world results primarily from the natural increase of urban populations.

3) Among the factors that influence the growth rate of individual cities, national rates of population growth stand out as dominant in intercity comparisons. Preston addresses 4 factors that reflect demographic, economic and political variables which potentially correlate with city growth rates: a) Size of city and administrative status:
There are two basic positions
i) Political: primate (especially capitol) cities in developing countries draw a disproportionate influx of population from other areas; rapid growth results from biases in patterns of government expenditure and employment
ii) Agglomerative economies: firms in large cities enjoy economies if (social and consumer) agglomeration resulting from the presence of other firms and of social infrastructure; diseconomiesof size (eg. pollution) may also be sloughed off on the society at large. Empirical evidence suggests a complex relationship between city size and growth rates that offers some support to each of the above positions. The predominant relations between city size and growth rate is negative. There is also some evidence to support the belief that a city's position in a country's urban hierarchy influences growth rate. The overall contribution of very large and capitol cities to the trends in growth is quite small owing to the relatively small number of cities that fall into either of these categories (although to the extend that such a determination can be made, being a capital city seems to impart more growth momentum than being the largest city).
b) National rate of population growth: cities draw from the same sources of growth as nations, and as a result national growth rate is the most highly correlated of the identified variables involved in rate of urban growth (accounting for 85% of the 31.2% explained variance in city growth rates).
c) National economic level and growth rates in terms of per capita GDP: other things equal, nations at higher levels of GNP per capita and with faster rates of economic growth have faster growing cities and faster rural-urban migration
d) Region: as is the case with Latin America (and its unusually high level of urban growth), certain characteristics specific to the region (eg. occupation structure, communications network) may product growth patterns not generally expected among developing countries

4) Urban Growth in developing countries has typically not been associated with a deterioration in industry/urban ratios. One of the reasons why urbanization in developing countries may be considered abnormal is the unusually small industrial labor force that support the urban population. Preston suggests that it is not clear why developing countries should aspire to a 19th Cent. (manufacture/industry) rather than 20th Cent (service) European model. Empirical evidence shows a trend toward an increase (often very modest) in the proportion of urban industry in developing relative to developed countries.

In the concluding section of the paper, Preston makes a number of observations relating policy to the findings reported above:
-Urban growth can be strongly influenced by policies affecting rates of natural increase, as well as by policies to influence migration
-Migration can be influenced by providing information or services that allow individuals to more effectively exercise their choices; by changing individuals' incentives to move; by ''restructuring'' development (eg. alteration in the levels of rural education, health advances, agricultural productivity); or by coercive measures such as identity cards or physical barriers.

NORMAN RYDER
The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change

Society persists despite the mortality of its members, through a process of demographic metabolism (people die, but others are born; society eats ya up and shits ya out dead), particularly the annual infusion of new birth cohorts. New cohorts may pose a threat to stability, but they also provide the opportunity for societal transformation. Each birth cohort acquires coherence and continuity from its own persistent macroanalytic features. Successive cohorts are differentiated by the changing content of formal education, by peer-group socialization, and by idiosyncratic historical experience. Young adults are prominent in war, revolution, immigration, urbanization, and technological change. Since cohorts are used to achieve structural transformation, and since they manifest its consequences in characteristic ways, research should be designed to capitalize on the congruence of social change and cohort identification (that is, cross-sectional studies miss a bunch of cool stuff we could get if we used longitudinal studies). At minimum, the cohort is a structural category with the same kind of analytic utility as social class: such a structural category has explanatory power because it is a surrogate index for the common experiences of many people in the category. Conceptually, the cohort resembles most closely the ethnic group: membership is determined at birth, and often has considerable capacity to explain variance, but need not imply that the category is an organized group.

Any fixed set of solutions to problems posed by a threatening environment becomes a liability whenever such problems change. Mortality and fertility make flexibility possible just as they make stability problematic. Demographic metabolism, while it makes change likely, or at least possible, does not guarantee that change will be beneficial. Nevertheless, new cohorts provide the opportunity for social change to occur. They do not cause change; they permit it. If change does occur, it differentiates cohorts from one another, and the comparison of their careers becomes a way to study change. Change has variant import for persons of unlike age. The consequences of change persist in the subsequent behavior of these individuals, and thus the subsequent behaviors of their cohorts.

A birth cohort consists of those born in the same time interval and aging together, though a cohort may be defined by any temporal event (like entering grad school in the same year, comrades!). The members of any cohort are entitled to participate in only one slice of life -- their unique location in the stream of history. Because it embodies a temporally specific version of the heritage, each cohort is differentiated from all others, despite the minimization of variability by symbolically perpetuated institutions and by hierarchically graduated structures of authority.

Age ascription is the cross-sectional counterpart of cohort differentiation. If age-specific norms, of the context in which they are being applied, change though time, cohort experiences will be differentiated.

The members of a cohort are influenced in the age at which they marry, the persons they choose to marry, and even their eventual likelihood of marriage by the particular set of circumstances prevailing at the time they reach marriage age. Changes thorough time in the proportions completing various stages of education provide an indelible differentiation of cohort character and behavior. The consequences of distinctive educational preparation prevail in the cohort's occupational flow chart. The cohort is distinctively marked by the career stage it occupies when depression or prosperity, peace or war, impinge on it (see Children of the Depression). The configuration of occupational structure imposed upon the cohort upon entry into the labor force is not immutable, but has systematic effects though time.

Every birth cohort is heterogenous. To some extent, all cohorts respond to any given period-specific stimulus (eg, the Depression). Different subsets of the cohort have different time patterns of development (eg, children from different class backgrounds differ in length of education and age at marriage).

The potential for change is concentrated in the cohorts of young adults who are old enough to participate directly in the movements impelled by change, but not old enough to have become committed to an occupation, a residence, a family of procreation or a way of life. Furthermore, the fact of change facilitates their development of different orientations than their parents and their community.

Rural to urban migration is highly selective of younger persons. The principal motor of contemporary social change is technological innovation. To children in such a society, technological change makes the past irrelevant. Its impact on the population is highly differential by age, and is felt most by those who are about to make choices of far-reaching, life-long import.

Far from being monopolized by parents, specialization is a continuous process throughout life, shared in by every group of which a person may become a member. Social change implies a change in the relative contributions to socialization made by the various possible agencies of socialization. This change (in which agents make what relative contributions) identifies the cohort as a social reality, reflecting and implementing the social change to which it owes its existence.

The peer group is a subset of one's cohort. It consists of people of the same age with whom one has attitude-forming relationships. It has the primary group characteristic of the family, and the achievement orientation of the society. The peer group is a symptom of the strain imposed on modern youth by its location at the fulcrum of change. The schedule of development includes a moratorium between preparation and participation.

Social change ordinarily touches older persons less closely. They lead a more restricted social life, they read less, etc. The longer a person persists in an established mode on conduct, the less likely its comprehensive redefinition, especially if s/he invests it with normative content.

In later years of life, cohort identity is blurred. Age becomes progressively less precise as an index of a persons' social characteristics (e.g., if a 30 year old man marries an 18 year old woman, that's a bigger subjective age difference than if he's 65 and she's 53).

We need longitudinal analysis. Aggregate analysis (looking at a cross section of cohorts) destroys individual sequences, and diverts attention from process. By implying that the past is irrelevant, cross-sectional analysis inhibits dynamic inquiry and fosters the illusion of immutable structure.

EDWARD SHORTER
The Making of the Modern Family.

CH 1 ''Household and Community in Traditional Society''

Description of Traditional Setting
Urban And Rural Households
In cities, the higher the income or the more elevated the social class, the larger and more complex the household. In poor households, there are few children/kin/servants in residences with household heads. Middle class families in traditional cities still large, but small in industrial cities.
In rural areas, households are characterized by complexity, with more than one generation. Often kin from a previous marriage due to premature deaths of spouses. Children often leave home to work at early ages.

Patterns of Domestic Groups
Three types:
1)basic conjugal family
2)stem family (includes grandparents)
3)multi-family household (extended laterally and vertically)

Stem families were highly prevalent in pre-industrial times. Parents often sold or gave (through legal agreement) farm to children when they got too old, but they still lived there.The multi family household was quite typical in Eastern Europe . It included the patriarch and the sons' families, but typically no more than three generations
Wealthier peasants had larger domestic units because they had a greater likelihood of conceiving and lower fetal mortality rates.

main point: households were more complex then than they are now.

Privacy in the household
Opportunities for sexual privacy were few, but because of crowded housing, there were many illegitimate births. Heterogeneous households which were crowded and lacked rooms separated by function were common in continental Europe. In US and England, households were partitioned by function. This led to more sexual privacy. But by the early 19th c., the lower middle classes in Europe were separating spaces. The revolution in domesticity started first among the upper classes, spreading out relatively recently to the poor.
One aspect of the ''revolution in sentiment'' depended on these changes in domestic architecture, but also on the infusion of romance in courtship in the lower classes -- without changes in the traditional space arrangement.

Community Controls

The central argument of this book is that the history of the family is the story of a shift in the relationship between the nuclear family and the surrounding community.

Features of traditional communal life

1) In Europe, the rural population was clustered in settlements. The arrangement of houses affected the family by conditioning the general array of community controls on individuals. More social control prevented ''sexual irregularity''

2) Although there was a higher degree of mobility in London, on the continent, mobility was relatively low. Such stability reduced the realm of privacy and vastly expanded the realm of public interaction. Occasions for loss of status were numerous. Village stability maintained communal norms. These communal norms were soon replaced by formal rules so that outsiders in the village would know how to behave. Stability was also due to small towns' ability to deflect external pressures.
Every society makes arrangements for ensuring that private behavior will conform to public morality. European communities regulated such matters as marital sexuality and the formation of the couple. These matters were shifted from informal regulation to public policy . Nowadays there is a strict line between public and private, but in traditional towns the community and family interlocked at many junctions and a ''web of regulation'' was necessary to ensure the stability of both.
This physical matrix for traditional communities discouraged intimacy. The evolution of the modern couple would require a dissolution of this intense collective life.

CH 2 ''Men and Women in traditional Society''

Popular marriage in former centuries was usually affectionless, held together by considerations of property and lineage. Emotional isolation of husband and wife was accomplished through the strict demarcation of work assignments and sex roles.

Affection in marriage
On the farm in traditional societies, men and women got along with hostility and withdrawal. Economics, rather than emotion, bound them together. Women were extremely subordinated to their husbands; they had to stand behind his chair while he ate.
The ''great surge of sentiment'' began earlier in the cities than in the country and sooner among the middle class than among the lower. References in literature, etc. began with the Puritans and never ceased thereafter. Could this have anything to do with a lower ability to impose corrective morality in the new world?

Sexual Roles

For the traditional couple, sex roles were absolute. However, within their particular domains, women were all powerful.. Women's control over domestic spheres, which were isolated from the economy as a whole, did not free them from subordinate social roles. Only direct access to the market economy would ultimately free them from this kind of role subordination. Nonetheless, Husbands consulted with their wives on economic issues concerning the farm because, often, it belonged to the wife through inheritance from her parents. Her major duties were household chores, farm work, and cottage industrial tasks. Hence, women were not without separate authority from their husbands.
Yet because there roles were largely removed from contact with the outside market economy, they had relatively little leverage on their husband. Only when wives gained direct contact in the market economy - by means of the cottage industry and later by means of factory work - did they seize hold of a solid level by which to pry themselves loose from subordinate roles.

Differing roles husband and wife felt obliged to assume in traditional society

Men took responsibility for external roles -- dealing with people outside the household. Women were expected to be inferior, passive, self-sacrificing, and to be objects for sexual convenience. Women did not leave their homes just for the sake of sociability, like men did all the time. Shorter concludes this chapter by reiterating that there was a huge sentimental distance between the couple.

CH 6 ''The Rise of the Nuclear Family''

The nuclear family (more than who is in the household) is distinguished by a special sense of solidarity that separates the domestic unit from the surrounding community. The nuclear family also has a ''privileged emotional climate.''

The traditional pattern: the family surrenders it s members

In traditional society, the claims that peer groups made on each family member suffocated the family's feelings toward privacy and solidarity. In continental Europe, the male peer group took over the couple forming duties from parents. On the other hand, Anglo-Saxon families still chose the couples. But overall, individual family members spent much more time away from home with their peers than is the case in modern Europe. (men in taverns, women in sewing circles, etc.)

The traditional pattern: Family and community in Birth, Marriage, and Death

In the traditional world the community was closely involved in birth, marriage and death ceremonies. Symbolically, this kind of community participation affirms how individual members were a part of a collectivity larger than the family. In traditional society the boundary between the conjugal family and community was still quite permeable.

The traditional pattern: community intervention in family life

The traditional community was able to compel individual family members to follow collective rules through a disciplinary technique called the charivari -- a noisy public demonstration to subject wayward individuals to humiliation in the eyes of the community. (these typically consisted of going outside someone's window late at night, banging on pots and pans, carrying torches, etc.)
As far as sexual offense, what upset the community was not sexual impropriety so much as the threat its consequences posed to the community social order (for example: Mate snatching from other ranks in the community, etc.)
The charivari also aimed at ''disorder'' in the household: men doing women's work, husband abuse, manifestations of feminine strength.
Everywhere the charivari helped the community to maintain order within individual families. It was a powerful solvent of privacy and intimacy in the family circle. It aided a constant sources of collective surveillance of individual behavior and permitted the group to pull individuals back into line with community norms. When these traditional assumptions about the community's rights over family affairs changed -- when the nuclear family came into life -- the charivari became irrelevant.

The rise of domesticity

Domesticity is the family's awareness of itself as a precious emotional unit that must be protected with privacy and isolation from outside intrusion, and was the third spearhead of the great onrush of sentiment in modern times.

1) Romantic love detached the couple from communal sexual supervision
2) Maternal love was the ''sentimental nest'' within which the modern family would ensconce itself
3) Domesticity sealed off the family as a whole from it s traditional interaction with the surrounding world.

Domesticity first took hold with the bourgeoisie. The working class then followed suit. There was a drift toward domesticity all over the western world, following the philosophy of the inter-war years, ''chacun chez soi'' (ever person in their own domain). Modernization was the ''tug boat'' of domesticity.

Kinfolk, community, and the great transformation

There are two processes which helped to bring about the rise of the modern family:

1)the couple's almost complete with drawl from routine family life
2)a corresponding strengthening of ties to parents and close relatives

Whereas in traditional society the kin group counted for little in emotional terms, being primarily a reservoir of support in emergencies -- it is now chiefly the parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who breach the walls of the nuclear family. Kin changed its role from material assistance to entertainment and friendship. The ties that held the nuclear family to neighbors have slackened significantly. Kin contacts are no replacement for the former community. They provide emotional support, but no sense of solidarity and material commonweal.

Postscript:changes in marital sexuality

Marriage became eroticized in the period 1850-1914. the lower class romanticized courtship first, and has practiced sex more steadily than upper classes on a day to day basis ever since. Since the 1960's, especially in the US, the frequency and originality of sex has increased. However, the result of these increases has been the abandonment of a meaningful emotional life outside the home , as well as a disintegration of marital stability and sense of family lineage.

CH 7 ''The Reason Why''

Market capitalism was probably at the root of the revolution in sentiment. At the same time that mentalities were undergoing the historic shift towards individualism and affection, the economic substructure of the world in which village people lived was in upheaval as well. It was most likely the replacement of this traditional ''moral'' economy with a modern market place economy that changed values and behavior.
The traditional economy was a local economy, where moral notions about how much people were entitled to charge or earn in order to support a family replaced market transactions. Yet with the rise of capitalism, economically self-sealed units blended into great nation-or region-wide market places.
It was first in the countryside that a modern industrial workforce began to form. The industrial proletariat was recruited, and he was clearly differentiated in cultural and material terms from the surround ing traditional populations. ''Capitalism'' carried the material standard of living upward.
Laissez-faire market place organization, capitalist production, and the beginnings of proletarianization among the work force were more important than any other factors in the spread of sentiment. Among the common people whom the 18th c. had forced into the market place, the egoistical economic mentality of capitalism spread into various non-economic domains of life, specifically into those ties that bind the individual to the surrounding community.
''The wish to be free'' that came with this egoistic notion emerged as romantic love between men and women. The development of increased sexual experimentation from economic individualism happened mainly in the lower classes. Perhaps this is because they had no great patrimonies to transmit through rigid structures of marriage and lineage.
Capitalism is also linked to the increase in maternal love, a transformation that first occurred in middle class domestic life. Because of less demands on people's time due to increased prosperity, people could pay more attention to their children. also, the sexual DOL became even more elaborated, with the wife as assigned care taker of children.

Hence, the disintegration of a collective way of life shifted the balance of family-community-relations from community involvement to intimacy.

ARLAND THORNTON AND THOMAS FRICKE
Social Change and the Family: Comparative Perspectives from the West, China, and South Asia, Arland

As Bill Axxin reminded us many times, this is an approach, not a theory. This paper asks: how do social and economic transitions such as industrialization, urbanization, demographic change, the expansion of education, and the long term growth of income affect the family structure and relationships? The answers are important for both theory and policy reasons. The question is an old one, and in this paper Thornton and Fricke (hubba, hubba, so says Janet) draw upon recent substantive findings to make some generalizations about the influences of social and economic change on the family.

Thornton and Fricke begin with the assertion that the family is central to social structure throughout the world, yet it is also difficult to define and delimit. They provisionally define the family as a social network, not necessarily localized, that is based on culturally recognized biological and marital relationships. This definition allows fro a lot of variance. For most people of the world, the basic principle of social organization has been family. The family has been responsible for the fundamental activities of society, including production, distribution, consumption, reproduction, socialization, co-residence, and transmission of property. Kinship groups generally pooled resources and responsibilities and participated in a specialization and division of labor among group members. Kinship relations also served as vital links in binding individual family groups into larger communities. the family mode of organization is also consistent within a wide range of economic environments.

Their perspective on family change is actor-based in the sense that they see such transformation as emanating from the behaviors of individuals and families in response to changing cultural and economic constraints and in pursuit of a hierarchy of goals. Primary causal factors considered are the shifts in the structure of production; the expansion of schools and education; increases in income; migration; and the uses of time. This list is admittedly incomplete.

Thornton and Fricke look at the familial mode of social organization in Taiwan, South Asia, and the West. This comparison aims to highlight common features of this mode in widely divergent cultural areas, and to hint at the potential for variations within a basic organizational type. The familial mode of organization was the primary org. mode in the West prior to the 18th century, in Taiwan prior to the 20th century, and is encompassed in a wide array of forms existing in South Asia today.

A typical feature of this familial mode of social organization in all three cultural setting is that the household organizes, directs, and manages its internal sources of labor to produce its means of existence. Several features are common to all three. The senior generation controls the options of young family members. Economic activities are generally distributed among age and gender lines. Children are included at young ages. All wages and benefits are contributed to the family, thus incurring economic dependence of those who do not directly control the resources. Economic dependence is limited most in the case of the young. this disparity in status, wealth and power between parents and children makes the transfer of rights to the means of production an important process. For many children, it marks the transition to independence and adulthood; for many parents, it marks the transition to retirement. Education was often limited to the household. In addition, this mode is characterized by high rates of fertility, which are balanced by high rates of mortality.

Cultural variations have been many among types. the Western model has been primarily nuclear, with no more than one married couple of the same generation occupying a household. Multiple married couples of mixed generation were also rare. Young children often resided in the homes of their employers, where they often worked as domestics, laborers, or apprentices. The Chinese family often included a young married son' parents, and sometimes included multiple married brothers. South Asian family forms vary dramatically among regions and castes with respect to the vertical and lateral integration of the household, but in general they were more generationally integrated than were Western households. These patterns of household organization affected the natures of the dependence of young people on the household, and, subsequently, marriage patterns. In the West, children often married only when able to financially support their own households, which meant later marriages. In China, as well as South Asia, children were able to marry before they achieved financial independence, integrating into their parents households. Thus, marriage occurred fairly early. These differences in marriage coincide with social attitudes concerning the role and meaning of marriage - a focus on romance and individualism in the West, and an extension of the family group in China and South Asia.

This outline suggests that the substantial changes outside and within the family are intricately related. Thornton and Fricke go through each of the processes referred to earlier: education, non family employment, urbanization and migration, and wage income.

Virtually all societies have striven to develop Western-style educational systems in response to the needs created by industrialization and urbanization. This means increased time spent in school and away from home for children. Most directly, expanded enrollment decreases the amount of time a child may be engaged in productive labor activities of the family. Children also spend less time in the socializing environment of the family. Schooling also increases the direct economic costs of children. It widens children's exposure to new ideas and methods, possibly affecting children's ability and willingness to challenge parental authority. Education also affects the interactional patterns of parents and older children. In the West, higher education most likely increased length of time till gainful employment, increasing age at marriage; and in Asia, where children reside with parents till older ages, schooling decreases time spent with family.

Large-scale industrialization took more and more people out of the home to work. In the beginning of such change though, research indicates that both parents and children in the West continued to view the economic activities of young people as family contributions. Once begun, the transition to non family wage work has been rapid and dramatic, inclusive of both women and the young. As with school enrollment, non family employment shifts the locus of primary activities out of the household. Again, this reduces the amount of time children spend with parents. In the West though, such a trend, especially in and near cities, probably increased the proportion of children who resided with their parents.

The special requirements of large-capital industry include large-scale organization and worker concentration. Industrialization is often accompanied by urbanization, which is often, in turn, accompanied by migration from country to city. Some families move as units, but more often, young people take jobs outside of the family and migrate to urban areas while their parents maintain their original economic unit and residence. Young migrants may live with extended family, in work dormitories, or as boarders with non-kin. Migration can be disruptive to family organization and parental control by removing young people from adult supervision and family and local community norms and values. In China and South Asia, the outcome is usually a diversified and dispersed family economic unit which stresses lateral extension and continued economic interdependence. Even some Western countries, such as the US initially experienced similar outcomes, but recent trends have been towards young migrants establishing independent economic households.

Although the long-term effect of wage income for children is diminished control by their parents, in the early stages of change, parental control over the output of children remains strong. Early paid employment of children sometimes represents a direct expansion of the domestic economy and is often seen as a diversification of risk. Many of the problems of wage labor overlap those of migration - lack of parental supervision, exposure to new ideas, etc. Directly leads to decreased economic dependence of children on elders.

As young people spend more time in school and in work outside of households, and as they establish their residences apart from parents, opportunities for interaction with the opposite sex increase while opportunities for parental supervision diminish. This will have effects on mate selection and marriage patterns. B/c Western patterns were more individualistic to begin with, Thornton and Fricke look at China and Asia, where significant trends can be easily detected in the parental control over such life choices of their children. In Taiwan, the pace of the decline in the control of parents over choice of marital partners has been dramatic. Education and employment opportunities outside the home have been determined to be the most influential factors. Both lead to increased independence for young people and increased autonomy. In Indonesia, marriages are still arranged, but the children are more often consulted. This benefits daughters more than sons. Throughout South Asia, there is also evidence for increased decision making autonomy on this level, but the effects seem to benefit sons more than daughters. The analysis for all three case examples suggest that the influence of social change on marriage age depends on parental authority over children, Children with more freedom to spend their earnings and more say in spouse selection probably have greater ability to translate expanded job opportunity into earlier marriage. Conversely, when parents have control over the marriage and earnings of their young adult children, increased earning power by those children can motivate parents to postpone their weddings. Incidence of premarital sex and pregnancy are also affected by the changed patterns of interaction, education and earnings. Their rates have generally increased.

Conclusion: Many aspects of family structure , particularly those concerning young adults, have changed throughout the world. Many of these changes have also been remarkably similar in the three settings. The review suggests that there is no single developmental pattern or sequence that all societies will experience. Careful attention needs to be focused on the precise causal mechanisms and processes of change, avoid ''grab bag'' concepts such as 'industrialization and 'urbanization'.

ARLAND THORNTON AND DEBORAH FREEDMAN
''The Changing American Family'' (1983)

This article is hard to summarize because essentially it is 30 pages of statistics related to the American family. I've tried to point out the most important trends.

Thornton and Freedman set out to document some basic past and current trends in family life and values in the US. Some current trends are similar to the bast, but many are indeed marked changes. However, the family is resilient, family ties remain strong, and American consistently report that a happy marriage and a good family life are the most important aspects of life.

Marriage and Divorce:

First marriage:
- Marital patterns of more recent birth cohorts are close to those observed early in the century with regard to age at first marriage
- After WWII, many young people chose to marry while still in school and before beginning work. With the age at marriage now rising, this trend has been reversed, but there is unlikely to be a return to the prewar pattern of newly universal postponement of marriage until after school completion.
- The legitimacy of remaining single is increasingly accepted by both young people and their parents
- Most young American still expect to marry and they are also optimistic about the permanency of their marriages.

Divorce:
- The actual rate of divorce in the US increased only gradually and steadily until the 1960's. Then came two decades of sustained and rapid increase. However, the rate leveled off and there was even a slight decline in 1982.
- The divorce rate affects all races and age groups about the same.
- During the 60's and 70's, the rapid increase in divorce outstripped the decline in mortality, resulting in an increase in the total marital dissolution rate.

Children of Divorce:
- Dissolution rates of the late 1970's imply that about one of every three white children and two of three black children born after marriage will experience a parental marital dissolution by age 16.

Reasons for the High Divorce Rate:
- The authors don't believe divorce is a sign of deteriorating family life and declining marital happiness.
- Reasons for increasing divorce include: people may now expect more of marriage and thus be more aware and less tolerant of their marital problems; Americans may now be more accepting of divorce as a solution to an unhappy marriage; and changes in laws and economic circumstances have made divorce more feasible.

Remarriage:
- Most scholars believe that divorce stems from dissatisfaction with a specific spouse and does not represent disillusionment with marriage as an institution. Most divorced people remarry.
- Remarriage rates among black American are considerable lower than those of whites.
- Divorce rates are also high among remarriages because of complex family structures.

The Unmarrieds:
- The percentage of currently single adults has increased markedly, especially among blacks.

Cohabitation without Marriage:
- The number of people cohabiting tripled between 1970 and 1977 and then nearly doubled again from 1977 to 1982.
- There is little to document the extent to which cohabiting partners view living together as a prelude to marriage, an alternative to marriage, or simply a more economical and enjoyable for of independent living. Thus, it is difficult to assess the effect of cohabitation on marriage rates.

Fertility

Fertility has decreased steadily from 1800 until the present, with the exception of the baby boom from 1947 to 1964.

Family Size and Childspacing:
- The fertility differentials observed before the baby boom - larger families among blacks and among those with less schooling and those who marry young - appear to have persisted into the 1980's.

Delayed Childbearing and Childlessness:
- White women have been delaying childbearing more than black women.
- Substantial portions of Americans continue to value parenthood and believe that childbearing should accompany marriage, and feel social pressure to have children.
- It is likely that changing values concerning parenthood, the weakening of social norms prescribing marriage and parenthood, a wider range of alternatives for women, the desire to postpone marriage and childbearing, and the availability of modern contraceptives and legal abortion will result in higher proportion of Americans remaining childless.
- Low fertility means both a smaller and an older population, with means fewer kin and a kinship network composed of older relatives.
- Small families means that parents have more time and resources for activities other than childbearing.
- There are social and economic repercussions of low fertility such as less public support for schools and complications with Social Security.

Birth control:
- The contraceptive revolution and legal abortion have probably helped reduce desired family size as well as unplanned childbearing.

Sexual Activity and Childbearing Among the Unmarried

Sexual Activity among Unmarried Teenagers:
- Premarital sexual activity among teenagers has increased steadily during the 1970's, especially among black teens.
- Attitudes toward premarital sex have become less restrictive over the last decade.

Contraception:
- Despite the increase in contraceptive use during the 1970's, a large proportion of sexually active teenagers remains unprotected, particularly at first intercourse, and practice tends to be careless and sporadic among those who do use contraception.
- Teens are unrealistic about the risks of getting pregnant and unwilling to admit to their degree of sexual involvement.

Pregnancy:
- More teens are turning to abortion to deal with unplanned pregnancies.

Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing:
- The increase in both the percentage of women who are unmarried and their rate of childbearing, coupled with he downturn in the fertility rate of married women, has sharply increased the percentage of all American births occurring out of wedlock in the past two decades.

Adoption:
- Adoptions increased in the 50's and 60's, but declined in the 70's due to legalization of abortion and the willingness of unmarried women to raise children alone.

Sexually Transmitted Disease:
- The incidence of sexually transmitted diseases has grown in recent years, reflecting largely the growth in numbers of unmarried adults and their increased sexual activity.

Public Policy:
- Changes in fertility have created challenges for public polity regarding such issues as contraception for teenagers, sex ed, and abortion.

Roles of Wives and Husbands

Wives in the Labor Force:
- By 1982, more than half of all women aged 16 and over were working for pay or looking for a job outside the home.
- Women's work patterns differ from men's in that they tend to work part-time, they have more interruptions in their work patterns, and they tend to work in low-paying ''female'' jobs.
- Most Americans are not interested in a reversal of roles with husbands assuming responsibility for the home and children.

Child Care:
- Since 1958, child care in other people's homes has almost doubled, while the use of group care centers has tripled.
- It is difficult to assess the net affect of women's work on the well-being of children. Nevertheless, most studies indicate that any differences between children of working and nonworking mothers are quite small.

Coordinating Family and Work Roles:
- By 1975, total workloads had decreased and the average work hours of employed married women and men were almost the same at about 55-57 hours per week.
- At the same time, women bore more than two-thirds of the home workload, but men averaged considerably more time on the job, since many working wives work only part time.
- Research has not demonstrated a clear relationship between the employment of wives and marital satisfaction.

Ramifications beyond the Family:
- Local communities have also been affected by wives' new work patterns: security problems have increased; there are fewer volunteer workers; neighborhood socializing may decline.
- National ramifications include different marketing tactics aimed at working women, changing hiring practices, and changing government policies.

Household Structure and Living Arrangements

Households have become smaller, less complex, and there has been an increasing trend toward independent living among young unmarried persons, the elderly, and mothers with no current spouse.

The Elderly:
- Most elderly who live alone prefer to maintain their independence so long as their health and financial circumstances permit, though most also want to live near their children.
- Maintaining a separate household now is economically more feasible for many elderly Americans.
- Institutionalization of the elderly is usually the solution of last resort.

Families Maintained by Women:
- Households headed by women with children under 18 but not husband present have now become a prominent type of living arrangement.
- Black children are more likely than white children to live with their mother alone because of blacks' higher rates of marital dissolution and out-of-wedlock childbearing and lower rates of marriage and remarriage.
- Single parents have tighter time and money constraints, but research has not shown that the quality of cared provided by single parents falls short of that in two-parent families.

Extended Family Living:
- While relatively few Americans live n extended households during any particular year, many Americans find it convenient or necessary to live with relatives at some time during their lives.

Family Relationships Beyond the Household

- Although Americans continue to be highly mobile, they do maintain contact with a substantial network of kind, often over considerable distances.
- Improved life expectancy has now made possible intergenerational relationships which frequently extend across four and even five generations.

Conclusion: Change and Continuity

Present-day American family patterns present a mosaic of change and continuity. Despite changes if family structure and relationships, most American still regard the family as central to their well-being and happiness. Explanations for changes in American family life are difficult. Certainly the long-term trends in urbanization, industrialization, and economic growth have influenced family patterns, but may changes in the family have not shown clear and consistent relationship with these long-term trends.

LOUISE TILLY AND JOAN SCOTT
Women, Work, and Family.

In this book, the authors look at the impact of industrialization on women's work from 1700 to 1950 in England and France. They focus on working class women . They assert that the level and character of industrial development determine the demand fro women as workers, reproducers, and child rearers. The supply of women available for these activities is shaped in part by demographic factors such as sex ratio, mortality, age and rate of marriage, and levels of fertility. These factors establish the structural context within which women make choices.
Work is a productive activity for household use or for exchange, The meaning, location, and nature of work have changed over time. Three categories of work are: domestic activity, wage earning activity, and productive activity.

Analysis
In their study Tilly and Scott look at the particular economic and demographic factors that influenced women's work. They also asked, who and how many women worked? What was their age and marital status? Why did they work? What was the impact of women's work on changes in their domestic and reproductive activity?
Social-sexual references such as single, married, mother, widow, as well as class and occupation designations are important for any historical understanding of women's experiences. The impact of industrialization was different on each of the above categories.
The amount of time required for household and childbearing activities affects the amount of time spent in productive work. A history of women's work must also be a history of the family. Both the mode of production and the structure of the family shape the productive and reproductive activities of women. The economic system eventually reorganizes the family, but at any point, the family is the institution which mediates between the system and the individuals.

Findings
Industrialization was a process of change which affected the economy, demography, and family organization in different ways and which also changed the relationships among them.

Britain and France 1700
This time period was characterized by the family economy, in which all household members worked at productive tasks, differentiated by age and sex. Fertility was high, but so was mortality. There were limited resources, so most of women's time was spent in productive activity. The household setting of work facilitated the combination of productive and domestic activities. children were viewed less as children and more as potential workers.

Industrialization
By the period of industrialization, early mortality had diminished somewhat, but fertility was still high. Illegitimacy increases due to increased proportions of landless wage earning workers. Thus, people had moved out of their homes and into the factories to work. families adapted their older expectations about wok and their strategies of reproduction to the new circumstances: the result was the family wage economy. Family members brought home wages earned by means outside the home, but the family still dictated the allocation of the labor of its members. There was still high fertility and high mortality. Women had difficulty maintaining a balance between childbearing and work. Their work tended to be quite episodic and irregular. Furthermore, the kinds of jobs they held depended to a large extent on the particular economic structure of the city they lived in. Single women dominated the ranks of female wage earners. married women became more involved in domestic activity and worked more irregularly.

End of 19th - Early 20th C.
This period began to see a decline in infant death rates and a decline in fertility. Technological change, growth of heavy industry lead to increased production and greater prosperity. The new organization of the manufacturing sector required an adult male labor force, but in the tertiary sector and increasing number of white collar jobs were available for women. The standard of living rose as men's wages increased. The family economy became a family consumer economy, as households specialized in reproduction and consumption. The family still continued to allocate the labor of its members. Women worked when wages were needed. families began to restrict fertility and more women spent time in child care. They had an expanded role in seeing to their children's well-being. Wage earning would be only a short interruption of married women's duties.

After WWII
Economic conditions and family needs (education for children, luxuries such as vacations) exerted a different influence on women's work. They required women's wages. The tertiary sector expanded and the demand for women in white collar jobs grew, particularly in Britain. Mortality and fertility decreased. Children stayed in school longer and (unlike pre-indus. times)women spent only a few years in reproductive activity. All of these factors increased the time women spent in wage earning activity.

Thus, since 1700, there has been a U-shaped pattern of women's reproductive activity. It went from being relatively high in the preindustrial economy to a lower level in industrial economies, to a higher level with the development of the modern tertiary sector. There is no neat complementary curve for reproductive activity. Reproductive patterns have changed in the following manner: from relatively low nuptuality, high marital fertility, and high infant and child mortality, TO high nuptiality, lower fertility, and lower infant and child mortality, TO, low fertility and low infant mortality

Determinants of women's productive activity

The interplay between a society's productive and reproductive systems within the household influences the supply of women available for work. The characteristics of the economy and its mode of production scale of organization, and technology influence the demand for women as workers.
The likelihood of women participating in production is strongly correlated with the household mode of production. The closer in time that a given household is to the experience of household production, the more likely it is that women will do productive work and that they will subordinate time spent in reproductive activity to that work. For instance, French rates of female work force participation were consistently higher than British rates. This was because during the 19th c. the French economy was marked by the continuing importance of household production. Due to rural consolidation of farms, Britain developed early a large ,factory based system.
In times of wage work outside households, aggregate and local economic organization influence the demand for women in the labor force. There is typically a segregation of occupation by sex, but when there is a shortage of the supply of male workers, more women will be drawn into non-female occupations.

The supply of women workers is shaped in part by demographic, social, and economic factors.

1)single vs. married women
2) household needs
-the families economic needs
-productive: everyone worked
-wage: subsistence requirements replaced labor needs. When possible, married women stayed home
3)emphasis placed on children and child care
-with decline in fert and mort, mothers were assumed responsible for children's health.
-after WWII, when emphasis on children's college ed was high, mothers sought work to pay for that.

The family provided a certain continuity in the midst of economic change. Values and behavior shaped under one mode of production continued to influence behavior as the economy changed. Older practices were slowly adapted to new circumstances. In the period defined in this book, the family economy was modified from a productive unit to a wage unit. Yet family membership continued to define work roles and relationships of parents and children. This study challenges an older view which held that industrialization separated the family and work, isolating one sphere fro another. The family continued to influence the productive activities of its members. Patterns of women's work are shaped by the intersection of economy, demography, and family.

WATKINS, MENKEN, AND BONGAARTS
''Demographic Foundations of Family Change''

This paper sets out to investigate the degree to which the potential offer by mortality decline has been realized, especially as pertains to family life. But as luck would have it, reductions in mortality have been accompanied by changes in fertility and marriage that make the effects of life expectancy more difficult to identify and interpret. Watkins and crew focus specifically on: the conjugal family, on women, and on the ages where family roles are likely to be particularly demanding (i.e. parents of children under 18 and children of parents over 65). Of particular interests are the cases where statuses expected to coincide do not (such as separation of marriage and parenthood or situations where an individual occupies several stressful statuses at the same time.

This article uses a simulation model that constructs family statuses from mortality, marriage, and fertility patterns. The model also produces two cohort measures: 1) proportion occupying a particular familial status at a particular time, and 2) number of years spent in various family statuses. Measure used in the study are calculated for cohorts assumed to live out their entire lives under the demographic conditions of : 1800 (demographic transition had just begun), 1900 (mortality and fertility had fallen substantially), 1960 (baby boom), and 1980 (current conditions). Their use of this type of model is justified in part by the assumption that some of the expectations and obligations associated with family status are shared among different social groups and have changed little since 1800.

There are four important assumptions in the model:
1) Although the experiences of an actual birth cohort occurs over a period of decades under changing conditions of fertility and mortality, the experiences of the simulated cohorts is taken for a single year - frozen in time, so to speak.
2) Standard demographic models describes typical age patterns of demographic behavior form the basis of the family status model used here.
3) The cohort is assumed to be homogeneous, in that all its members live under the same sets of risk and all life course variation is random.
4) The experience of single parenting is always underestimated since the model does not allow for fertility outside of marriage.

RESULTS
When parents live longer, people remain sons and daughters longer (not a big surprise). The proportion of women with at least one surviving parent has risen dramatically, especially at older ages. This change is due to longer life spans for both the cohort (daughters) and especially for the parents.

Although mortality alone accounts for the increase in number of years successive cohorts spend as children, both mortality and marriage patterns determine how long cohorts spend as spouses. In this area, the increase in divorce has been at least as dramatic and steady as the decrease in mortality rates.

It is important to note the 1960s baby boon cohort with respect to many long term characteristics of demographic change. For instance in 1960, proportion married exceeded the levels of 1890 and 1900, despite a more general trend toward lower rates - a trend still evident in the 1980 data. Care should be used when interpreting the 1960 data in terms of long term trends.

Combining the experience of younger and older women, and examining cohorts over their entire lifespan, late 20th century cohorts spend more years in all marital statuses (except widowed) than in the past. Further, the increase in divorce rates and delayed marriage have not overcome the effects of improved adult mortality on the time spent married.

Over the course of time examined, the time spent with children of any age has on the whole increased, while the number of year spent children under 18 has decreased - since much to the gain on the whole is the product of increased life expectancy.

Since the baby boom, the delays in marriage, the increase in divorce, and the declines in infertility have reduced the time spent in the conjugal family. But over the long run, the effect of continued mortality decline counterbalances the marriage and fertility changes so that current cohorts spend more time in conjugal families than 1800 and 1900 cohorts. (This contrasts is the baby boom effect again.)

Adult years with parents over 65 has nearly tripled over the time period examined (due to longer life expectancy), while adult years with children under 18 has decreased (due to lower fertility rates) by almost 30 percent. The combined effect is an increase in the magnitude of dependency burden.

Speculation about social changes that may be provoked by demographic changes:

1) Alteration in potential time in various family statuses may itself be one of the sources of demographic change; parents might base their fertility decisions not only on the number of surviving children they desire but also on the years they want to spend with obligations to children.

2) Another reaction to mortality change may be to shift some of the more costly and burdensome family obligations to the community.

3) Although some of the obligations associated with family membership and with family status have persistent, others have been redefined. A redefinition of family roles (analogous to a tendency toward redefinitions of sex roles) may have occurred. Family obligations may be redefined by the perception of the years left to live in that status.

What to expect in the future?
-further mortality change
-fiscal obligations for elderly parents more likely to be met by public sector
-short run increase in fertility - due to infertility concerns raised by delaying child bearing
-long run - fertility will remain low
-more vigorous debate on the appropriate allocation of financial support for dependent children between the family and community
-continued redefinition and blurring of family roles (from such sources as cohabitation and divorce)