Assessing the Impact of Violence on Motivation for Parenthood Among Blacks and Whites

Abstract

Using data from the General Social Survey of 1993 and a sample of 1,347 Whites and 179 Blacks, this study examines the hypothesis that societal violence differentially affects Black and White Americans' motivation for parenthood. Across and within races, the relationships between three dimensions of this impetus (number of children, value placed on having children, anomie about having children), violence-related variables (violent and defensive attitudes, violence experience, weapon ownership) and sociodemographic, sex-role ideology, religiosity, and life-satisfaction factors were assessed and compared. Blacks and Whites of similar backgrounds and orientations evidenced similar motivation for parenthood, but significant differences were found between the races in terms of anomie, number of children, and the impact of violence-related variables. INTRODUCTION Decades ago, the pioneer sociologist Emile Durkheim (1895/1964) contended that as societies modernize, traditional institutions such as religion and the family are weakened. His musings have been confirmed by modern researchers such as Ritzer (1992) and Knapp (1994), who explain that as extended families break up into nuclear families, fragmented groups of relatives, and households of single, unattached individuals, anomie-a sense of normlessness-often results. As Schwartz (1996) maintains, this normlessness can aggravate a welter of social problems, from high levels of violence, crime, and suicide, to increasing numbers of illegitimate and abandoned children. The literature on violence has attributed its existence to such different structural variables as poverty, unemployment, mental disorder, family breakdown, peer pressure, and a multitude of other societal scourges (Conklin, 1992; McCaghy & Capron, 1994; Sampson & Laub, 1994). More broadly, Eckersley (1993) suggests that rampant violence, growing crime rates, increasing drug abuse problems, and widespread depressive illness are all signs of a deepening crisis in the value systems of Western culture. Indeed, violence has become a hallmark of American society, manifesting itself in social reality and in the psyches of individuals. However, official reports in recent years have indicated a general decline in crime rates. For the period from 1973 to 1992, for example, the highest rate of violent victimization was 35.3 per thousand persons, reported in 1981. That number fell until 1986, then started to climb, reaching 32.1 per thousand in 1992 (U. S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994). Despite evidence that aggregate rates of crime have been leveling off in the past two decades, many argue that the deep social pathologies that breed crime remain intact (Anderson, 1997), and that the issue of crime continues to be a matter of concern for policymakers as well as the public (Blumstein, 1995). When aggregate crime data are broken down by certain demographic variables such as gender, age, and race, one finds that age is the variable whose effect has changed significantly in recent years. That is, violent crimes committed by young people have been on the rise (Blumstein, 1995). Increasing juvenile violent crime rates, the barrage of media reporting of violent acts, and the violence-oriented entertainment industry combine to reinforce the harsh reality of a culture that is, at best, plagued by violence, or that, at worst, condones and promotes some levels of violence as acceptable or even desirable. Can living within such a harsh reality lead individuals to rethink the importance of parenthood and having children? This is the question the present study seeks to answer. In recent years, a considerable body of research has focused on the different factors that determine motivation for parenthood and the value of having children. This concern stems from the dramatic decline in pronatalist values evidenced in industrialized societies, the United States in particular. …