Determinants of Marriage and Childbearing Attitudes

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This is a proposal to study two central dimensions of social life in the United States today: 1) marriage and marital process, including cohabitation and nonresidential unions; and 2) childbearing, involving both the bearing and rearing of children. Although we begin from an interest in behavioral aspects of marriage and childbearing, this research centers on the systems of attitudes, values, beliefs, preferences, and social norms underlying and providing motivations for marriage, cohabitation, childbearing, and childrearing. Whereas extensive research has been conducted concerning marriage and childbearing behavior, relatively little work has been done on the ideational phenomena underlying and motivating these behaviors. Our research plan focuses on the forces determining marriage and childbearing attitudes, values, beliefs, preferences, and perceptions of social norms among young adults. Our first goal is to examine how aspects of the parental family- including socioeconomic factors, the social organization of the parental family, parental religious affiliation and participation, and parental marital and childbearing experience--influence ideational phenomena of the children growing up in these parental families. The second aim of our analysis is explication of the ways in which parental attitudes, values, beliefs, preference, and perspections of social norms influence children's ideas. Our third goal shifts to the impact of children's own experiences with school, work, marriage, and childbearing on their ideas about marriage and childbearing. The empirical analyses will rely on three data sources that each include key measures from two generations: (1) the National Survey of Children (NSC); (2) the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH); and (3) the Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children (IPSPC). These three data sets each provides the essential ingredients for a study of the intergenerational determinants of ideational phenomena related to marriage and childbearing.