Adamchak's ideal family size and family background: a research note.

Abstract

The attempt was made in this study to further investigate Adamchak's (1977) findings that women whose mothers had been employed around the time the respondent was 16 had a higher ideal family size than those women whose mothers had not been employed. The sample used was drawn from the 1975-1978 General Social Surveys conducted by the US National Opinion Research Center. Following Adamchak, the sample was limited to married females between the ages of 18-49. Duplication of the Adamchak study was not achieved. When ideal family size 1 was cross-tabulated with mother worked, age 16, the respondents whose mothers had worked had a smaller mean ideal family size (2.36 children) than those whose mothers had not worked (2.46 children). For ideal family size 2 (including the "as many as you want" responses in the uppermost category), both groups reported 2.49 children as the mean ideal. The "4+" categories in the 2 cross-tabulations were increased much more for those whose mothers did work when the "as many as you want" response was included. When the findings of this study were compared with those of the Adamchak (1977) study, it became obvious that neither of the current definitions of family size produced results compatible with the earlier findings. Close inspection of the figures revealed some major discrepancies. Adamchak reported that 33.1% of the respondents whose mothers had worked and 39.8% of those whose mothers had not worked selected zero or 1 child as ideal. In this study, only around 3% of those whose mothers had worked and around 4% of those whose mothers had not worked selected this category, using either definition of ideal family size. Additionally, over 1/2 of the respondents (n=199) in the current study saw 2 children as ideal, but Adamchak reported only about 20% of his sample selected this response.