Life Course Structures Flashcards
Billari and Liefbroer 2007 – Should I stay or Should I go? Impact of Age Norms on Leaving Home
Using the Panel Study on Social Integration in the Netherlands (5 waves), they test whether age norms influence the timing when young adults leave their parental home. They conduct a probit model testing whether or not people have left the parental home. Then they conduct EHA on the people who had not left at the beginning of wave I to predict whether age norms (from family, friends) predict leaving, whether housing instability predicts leaving, and whether the formation of a union predicts leaving. Age norms and friend’s perceptions were unpredictive but parent expectations did. So too did housing instability. “Social influence could operate at the level of social network rather than at the society level.”
Cherlin 2020 – Degrees of Change: As Assessment of the Deinstitutionalization of Marriage Thesis
Institutionalist theorists propose that institutions are decreasing in their effects on the population. Thornton’s (2012) DI institutional change is either developmental or transformational. Institutions have 3 cornerstones: normative, regulative, and cultural-cognitive. Transformational change has occurred with regards to cohabitating and such, but norms within relationships have seen some developmental changes. Most notably, institutionalization thesis has mainly occurred for low-ses people in the US, whereas college grads still marry. Other forms of partnerships are increasing and norms within marriage are decreasing.
Danzinger and Ratner 2010 – Labor Market Outcomes and the Transition to Adulthood
Economic conditions for young adults (25-34) across time, space, and identity (RCG). They have bifurcated; college educated have seen increases and the rest decreases. Reasons include: technological adviaces, inflation, among other. Women’s returns have increased due to education, as returns to education have increased across the board, but certain populations remain underrepresented. Race differences can be attributed to spatial, skills, and incarceration mismatch (Wilson 1987). Causal links btwn these changes and other changes (marriage, childbirth, moving out) are possible but indefinite. Education should be considered a lifelong process.
LaRossa and Sinha 2006 – Constructing the Transition to Parenthood
From field notes of 66 couples at new-parent’s retreats, they find discourse used during class reaffirmed existing parenting stereotypes and demarcated the transition from a person to a parent. Parenting is socially constructed and informed by the cultural toolkits available to individuals.
Lucas, Molina, and Towey 2020 – Race/Ethnicity over 50 Years of structural Differentiation in K-12 Schooling: Period-Specific and LIfe Course Perspectives
Conduct a meta-analysis of education papers to test whether structural changes (classical tracking, overarching, or unremarked revolution) changed inequality. First, they demarcate when these eras happened. Patterns changed across cohorts, but they suggest early education is the main source of inequality.
Pallas 2006 – A Subjective Approach to Schooling and the Transition to Adulthood
Through life history interviews with 52 respondents, they find adulthood is detached from social roles, and instead defined relationally (responsibility). Education was hardly discussed at all. This calls for sociologists to focus on experience. They accuse sociologists of using a “Modernist” approach of dissecting lives into distinct time periods for easier analyses.
Tillman, Brewster, and Holway 2019 – Sexual and Romantic Relationships in Young Adulthood
Over the past 50 years, non-marital sexual relationships have increased in frequency, yet the most recent cohort has seen a decrease in sexual activity. College students are most likely to marry and least likely to be sexually active. Interracial/ethnic relationships have increased and the acceptance of homosexual relationships. Changes in dating due to expressive individualism and shifting economic roles/opportunities available. High school grads are least likely to ever marry, likely due to economic reasons. Cohabiting has increased for all. they use the National Survey of Family Growth to show that sexual relationships have increased significantly over the past 6 cohorts.
Yi 2020 – Leaving Home, Entering Institutions: Implications for Home-lEaving in the transition to Adulthood
Uses the NLSY97 and EHA to test differences in home-leaving when considering institutional reasons (education, military, incarceration) and whether there are race differences in rates. Including institutional measures increases the number of people who have left home bc most people on surveys will still list themselves at parent’s home while in institutions. White kids most likely to go to college, black kids most likely to be incarcerated, and all equally likely to join the military. Hispanic adults most likely to enter living arrangements with non-parental others.
