Changes In Marriage Patterns Research Articles

Variations in marriage patterns in central Thailand

Data from a survey of marriage patterns in central Thailand illustrate the complexity of change in marriage patterns in a developing society--the diversity of traditional patterns, the different directions of change, and the variations in current patterns. The data were collected in 1978 and 1979 from ever-married women aged 15-44 in three settings:a central plains village, established areas in Bangkok, and a Bangkok squatter settlement. Three forms of entry into marriage were identified:ceremonial marriage with parental involvement in the choice of spouse, ceremonial marriage with self-choice of spouse, and nonceremonial marriage (elopement and living together). All three forms of marriage existed in each setting, and the dominant form differed in each. In general, a family background of higher socioeconomic status led to a greater likelihood of a marriage ceremony and greater parental involvement in spouse choice. Women with more education were also more likely to marry with ceremony, but higher education for daughters was associated with less parental involvement in spouse choice. These findings suggest that marriage patterns may remain diverse in Thailand, even as further development occurs.

Age at Marriage: Inter and Intra Cohort Variation

Changes in marriage patterns in the United Kingdom over time are reviewed. Each successive cohort of women born between 1920 and 1940 married sooner than the preceding cohort. This trend culminated with the cohorts born in the 1940s all of whom had remarkably similar age at marriage patterns which were the youngest ever recorded since civil registration began. In analysis of the 1946 cohort three factors were found to affect age at marriage directly: educational status occupation at marriage and mothers age at marriage. Subsequently there has been a dramatic reversal in marriage behaviour; young people are marrying less and marrying at later ages. The issue of whether this is due to a change in timing or rejection of marriage is addressed the contribution of cohabitation to this change is assessed and structural and ideological changes are discussed. (EXCERPT)

Research in Progress

RESEARCH IN PROGRESS Compiled by Barbara L. Curtis William S. Abruzzi, assistant professor of anthropology at the Ogontz campus of Pennsylvania State University, is doing research on the activities of Lucretia Mott in the abolition movement. He plans to prepare printed materials for use at the Mott Visitor Center and Memorial Garden in La Mott, PA. * # # Stephen W Angeli, a graduate student in religious history at Vanderbilt University , has been examining William Penn's work on behalf of religious toleration. He has also been doing research on the role of Rhode Island Quakers in King Philip's War. * * * Preparation of a concise biography of Civil War nurse Cornelia Hancock is the project of Doris Armstrong of 286 N. Maple Ave., Ridgewood, NJ 07450. She is participating in the preparation of a reference work on notable New Jersey women. * * * A study of early Quaker families of Salem, West New Jersey (1675-1750) and their changing marriage patterns is being prepared by Ruth Hall Brooks, currently a student at Pendle Hill, Wallingford, Pa. 19086. After May 1986 she may be addressed at 137 Prospect Ave., Westwood, NJ 07675. * * * A graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, Michael J. Chiarappa, is concerned with the historical ethnography of late 17th and early 18th century life in the New Jersey counties of Salem, Gloucester and Burlington. He is examining examples of pattern brick building and is seeking biographical data on local bricklayers . He may be reached at 605 Maple Ave., Audubon, NJ 08106. * * * Richard Dickenson, 128 Central Ave., Staten Island, NY 10301, is making a study of the Christiansburg Institute and the role of the Friends Freedmen's Association in assisting it. * * * Martin David Dubin, a faculty member at Northern Illinois University, is investigating the role of Japanese Quaker leader Inazo Nitobe in the League of Nations at Geneva. Correspondents may consult Dubin at 1627 Shifly Lane, DeKaIb, IL 60115. * * * Thomas Ingersoll, who is associated with the University of California at Los Angeles and lives at 8995 Keith Ave., Apt. 9, Los Angeles, CA 90069, is doing research on the manumission of slaves in Chester, Pa., at the close of the 18th century. * * * Miers Fisher, one of the Virginia exiles, and his journal during the period 17751776 are the subject of a study by Kenneth Morgan, lecturer in history at the West London Institute of Higher Education. His work is part of the preparation of the Fisherjournals to be published by the Oxford University Press under the auspices of the British Academy. * * * Disputes and their resolution as they occurred in the Delaware Valley from 16801710 is the general topic of a doctoral dissertation being prepared by W M. Offiitt for Johns Hopkins University. Offiitt lives at 533 North 49th St. , Philadelphia, PA 19143. 64 Research In Progress65 Ronald P. Rinaldi, 302 Miller Ave., Somerville, NJ 08876, a graduate student at Duke University, Durham, NC, is doing research on the attitudes of New Jersey Quakers to the militia laws of New Jersey as passed in the period 1775-1781. * # * The Quaker mission to Germany in 1938 is the subject of research by Howard Storch, 227 Franklin St. , Hackettstown, NJ 07840. He is a member of the faculty at Morris County Community College. * * * Alice Sue Wheeler, 1455 Beacon St., Brookline, MA 02146, is preparing a doctoral dissertation for Boston University on the subject of Quakers in New Bedford in the early part of the 19th century. * * * Carolyn Williams, 549 E. Penn St., Pasadena, CA 91 104, a degree candidate at the University of California at Los Angeles, is preparing a dissertation on the Female Anti-slavery Society of Philadelphia, 1833-1870. ...

Population and our society: some demographic and social interactions.

Recent demographic trends in Australia are analyzed with a focus on socioeconomic and cultural implications. The impact on family formation and on the interaction between state and family is examined. Factors considered include social services female labor force participation changing marriage patterns and the aging of the population. (ANNOTATION)

Fertility trends and prospects in Australia and other industrialised countries.

Marital fertility in Australia has been falling, with occasional halts and reversals, for a century. The trend in overall fertility has been rendered more complex by changes in marriage patterns. The original fertility decline may not have been triggered by a mortality decline but instead may have initiated one. The paper analyses the unprecedentedly steep fall in fertility after 1971 and the reversal from the mid-1970s of marriage trends which was so sudden as to wipe out in three years the entire movement towards younger marriage over the preceding thirty years. Fertility and fertility control trends are compared with other industrialised countries, and prospects for future natural increase and immigration are assessed.

Energy flow and the persistence of a human population: a simulation analysis.

The authors describe "a human ecosystem model, NUNOA, [which] simulates the yearly energy balance of individuals, families, and extended families in a hypothetical farming and herding community of Quechua Indians in the high Andes. The yearly energy demand of each family, based on the caloric requirements of its members, is computed by simulation of agricultural and herding activities in response to stochastic environmental conditions. The family energy balance is used in determining births, deaths, marriages, and resource sharing." The model can be used "to investigate the effect of changes in marriage patterns, resource sharing patterns, or subsistence activities on the ability of the human population to survive in the harsh Andean environment. Results from the model suggest that the substructuring of a population into extended families provides a mechanism for sheltering the population from control by exogenous influences. A population without substructures for resource sharing is shown to be unstable in such an unpredictable environment."

Low Fertility and Liberal Democracy in Western Europe

During the past two decades, fertility decline in Europe has been precipitous, and there is an increasing convergence among countries toward a level at which the replacement of the population in the long run is no longer assured. For most of the 1970s, both German Republics and Luxembourg have had more deaths than births each year, and, as a leading demographer asserted at the end of 1978, If the present trends should persist, the population of Europe as a whole and of the USSR would begin to decline at the turn of the century and the US population would stop growing in about 2015. ' Several countries that still have a positive balance between births and deaths are in that position only because they have a relatively large number of women in the prime reproductive years and not because their fertility per woman is high enough to ensure replacement. At the present time, moreover, demographers are increasingly of the opinion that changing patterns of marriage and family formation are such that a spontaneous upturn in fertility, sufficient to assure replacement of the population, is unlikely.2 Low fertility and declining rates of population growth pose difficult problems of adjustment for government and society: changes in age structure and a growing number of elderly dependents-especially those at the oldest ages-strain the financial bases of social security systems; aging work forces introduce unwanted rigidities into the operation of labor markets; depopulation of rural areas calls into question the shape of regional development policies. While many Western economists nowadays appear to believe that economic growth is possible under conditions of population stagnation, albeit at a lower level than in the recent past, they are much less certain about continued growth after a population starts to decline.3 In addition, fluctuations in fertility bring with them discontinuities and problems of accommodation as cohorts of different sizes work their way through the age structure, causing waves of ex-

MARITAL ASSIMILATION OF POLISH-CATHOLIC AMERICANS: A CASE STUDY IN SYRACUSE, N.Y., 1940–1970

The spatial pattern of marriages in conjunction with ethnic identity is used to study one case of assimilation in America. Changing marriage patterns for Polish-American Catholics in Syracuse, New York between 1940 and 1970 reveal a considerable increase in exogamy based upon national origin. Exogamy is associated with residential outmovement of Polish-Americans from the ethnic core, and to a lesser extent it has occurred among those Polish-Americans in the core. A pan-Catholic group is emerging because Polish-Catholics are marrying other Catholics.

Trends in marriage and divorce in Peninsular Malaysia

Summary Median age at marriage for women has risen sharply for each of the three major ethnic groups - Malays, Chinese and Indians, in Peninsular Malaysia since 1957. The sharpest rise has been recorded for Malays and Indians, whose median age at marriage was barely over 17 in 1957. A shortage of potential husbands in the traditionally sanctioned ages contributed to the rise for Malays and Indians, but was probably not the paramount reason; average age differences between the spouses narrowed, but median age at marriage for men actually rose. During the same period, the previously extremely high divorce rates amongst Malays have fallen sharply, though wide inter-state differences remain. The sharp changes in marriage patterns reflect, and in turn are partly responsible for, far-reaching social and economic changes. They have profoundly affected fertility levels and patterns, as well as intra-familial relationships.

Demographic perspectives for the 1980s

Six months from now we will be conducting the 20th Decennial Census of Population and Housing, a billion-dollar project which will provide the basic demographic data for our country in the 1980s. The census will tell us much about what has been happening and where we are going and will certainly form the basis of much of the population data with which nutrition educators will be working in carrying out the charge of the conference concerning nutrition education. I want to touch upon some demographic items of special interest. I shall review population trends in the 1970s and suggest some likely prospects for the 1980s. Demographically, the 1970s has been one of our more interesting decades, breaking with many tradional trends of the past. Our population structure has been under the heavy influences of several major demographic elements-some of which will continue into the 1980s. These elements include: I Large and rapid changes in the birthrate (In the past 50 years we have seen record low rates in the Depression years followed by the post-World War II baby boom and by the current new record lows of the 1970s. These changes have caused a tremendous imbalance in the age structure of the population.) 2 The maturing of the baby boom, which has had a significant impact as this large cohort passes through different stages of life 3 Changes in patterns of marriage, divorce, and family formation 4 The women's movement, which, among other effects, has changed the composition of the labor force as more women enter the labor market and develop careers 5 Changing lifestyles as young people remain single longer and leave the parental home to set up separate living arrangements prior to forming their own families.

The Psychosocial Implications of Voluntary Childlessness

With the changes in marriage patterns, new family structures are emerging; one of which is an intentionally childfree lifestyle

Population, plague, and the sweating sickness: demographic movements in late fifteenth-century England.

Demographic movements remain a controversial and largely unknown facet of medieval studies. This is particularly true for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the later middle ages, which in western Europe coincided with the second and most destructive pandemic of plague in recorded history. Most observers of late medieval England agree that population declined from sometime early in the fourteenth century, and that the decline extended to at least 1450, but the precise causes, extent, and chronology of this decline are still very much in debate. A recent analysis of 20,000 testamentary records from East Anglia, London, and Hertfordshire from 1430 to 1480 indicated that epidemic disease was the primary element in controlling and establishing demographic trends. It also showed, however, that this pattern began to change in the early 1470s when child replacement ratios, the generational measure of parents to progeny at fixed periods in time, began to rise for virtually all socio-geographic groups surveyed. By process of elimination, it was concluded that this was the result of an upturn in fertility. Since population increases generally have been attributed to changes in marriage patterns and/or mortality schedules, and since mortality was the major element in regulating population from 1348, the onset of the Black Death and the second plague pandemic, the postulated fertility rise of the 1470s took on even greater interest. Were the events of the 1470s anomalous, or did the projected fertility rise continue on into the 1480s, and even lead to the long-term period of population growth which occurred in the sixteenth century?

Readings on productivity in policing : edited by Joan L. Wolfle and John F. Heaphy. Police Foundation (1909 K Street N.W. Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20006), 1975, 149 pp., paperback

The educational gradient in U.S. mortality has been rising among non-Hispanic whites. A common intuition sees the growing educational divide in marital status and increases in educational homogamy as potential explanations. To empirically assess this possibility, we analyze mortality from 1986 to 2015 using the National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files (562,584 persons; 204,756 deaths). At the individual level, being unmarried and spouse's lower educational attainment are associated with higher mortality. Counterfactual analyses, however, reveal that the growing educational divide in marital status and increases in educational homogamy contribute little (8%–15%) to the widening educational gradient in mortality. Our simulation analyses further show that extreme educational divide in marital status could substantially drive up mortality inequality, whereas educational homogamy, even when pushed to the maximum level, would play a limited role in increasing mortality inequality. Combined, the results suggest that changes in the educational divide in marital status have the potential to affect mortality inequality, but the actual changes over the past decades were not strong enough to have a major impact; increases in education homogamy, in contrast, barely affect mortality inequality by education. Along with other research showing small effects of educational homogamy on income inequality, our research suggests that the consequences of changing marriage patterns for social inequalities in general and health inequalities in particular may be more limited than commonly assumed.

Court Conciliation: An Analysis

The basis of this article is an analysis of 50 referrals for conciliation from the Magistrate's Court to the Hastings Community Counselling Service in New Zealand. An examination of conciliation and its relationship to various professions precedes the actual analysis. Some comments on prevention are added, as the main interest of the Counselling Service is the preventive approach to social work. It is suggested that in a period of change in marriage patterns a consideration of values in relation to marriage and family life is timely. A small sample has serious limitations but the tentative conclusions and observed trends may stimulate further research and assist in establishing areas where action is required.

Xingu Carib Kinship Terminology and Marriage: Another View

The structure of Xingu Carib kinship terminology has been alleged to derive from a process of changing marriage patterns (local and kin group exogamy to increasing endogamy) caused by severe depopulation. This explanation makes use of a functional theory of kinship terminology, in which discrete terms are viewed as being indicative of marriage behavior. In the present paper, Xingu Carib terminology is discussed as a system of classification which distinguishes categories of kinsmen within a more inclusive model of "kinship." "Marriage" is viewed as a set of native concepts distinct from, yet related to, an idea of behavior for all kinsmen, which serves to justify requests for spouses among kinsmen yet does not exclude non-kin as marriage partners. These concepts, together with an examination of present marriage practices, suggest that the system offers a range of choices which are obscured by the use of "endogamy" and "exogamy" as descriptive categories.

Changing Marriage Patterns in Lebanon

Marriage is probably the oldest social institution in human history. It constitutes an important step in starting a family to which both men and women have to be initiated. The age of women at marriage is an important determinant of the type of society, indicating its status as "traditional" or "modern". Age at marriage is related to a number of phenomena including the level of education, the participation of women in the labor force, the economic situation prevailing in a society, and the social perception of marriage.

New Techniques to Estimate Fertility and Mortality: The Case of Colombia

Some methods of stable and quasi-stable population analysis recently developed at the Office of Population Research of Princeton University were applied to the problems of inferring levels and trends in the vital rates of the Colombian population during the intercensal years 1938-1951 and 1951-1964. Analysis of census data indicated a gain of 7-8 years in life expectancy at age 5 for Colombian women between 1938-1951 and 1951-1964 and of about 4 years in the corresponding figure for males. Mortality risks in Colombia had recently been higher than they were in countries such as Brazil and Mexico. Whereas life expectancy at age 5 for males would not be higher than 55 years even if the male rate of growth for the 1951-1964 period were assumed to be equal to the female rate reported calculations for Mexico indicated a figure of 59 years and for Brazil a figure of about 60 years for the period 1950-1960. With higher mortality in Colombia and about the same rate of natural increase for the three countries the implication was a higher level of fertility in Colombia which seemed to be corroborated when the cumulative age distribution of Colombian males and females in 1964 were compared with their Brazilian or Mexican counterparts in the 1960 census. At all ages and for both sexes the Colombian data yielded evidence of a somewhat younger population which necessarily implied a higher level of fertility combated to the other two countries. The results suggested that Colombia was still behind these two other countries as far as the transition in mortality was concerned. A higher level of fertility in Colombia than in Mexico or Brazil unless counteracted by changes in marriage patterns or in reproductive habits might lead to acceleration of the rate of growth as mortality declines further.

On Measuring the Marriage Squeeze

During the 1960's, single men have been marrying at an increasing rate, and single women at a decreasing rate. These trends can be explained almost entirely by disproportions between the sexes at the prime ages of marriage-that is, by what is commonly called the "marriage squeeze." The disproportions arose from the increase in births during the period 1939-47, coupled with the fact that women marry earlier than men.These changes in marriage patterns must certainly have some effect on the birth rate and on household formation, although perhaps a secondary one. The consequences of these changes are a project for further inquiry.

Changing Marriage Patterns in a Highland Guatemalan Community

Changing Marriage Patterns in a Highland Guatemalan Community

Differential Changes in Marriage Patterns

N the last two decades most of the Western world has experienced a striking marriage boom. The annual number of marriages and marriage rates have been at a higher level than before in the United States, most of Northwestern Europe, and among the European populations in the countries of the British Commonwealth. Many features of the sharp fluctuations in marriage rates can be explained by reference to events of the period. Thus all the belligerent countries had a conspicuous peak in marriages in the early postwar years. The general high level of marriages throughout the whole period since about 1935, however, cannot be so explained. It has been shown I that the cohorts 2 born since about 1915 have been marrying at a younger age than their predecessors, and it seems certain that a smaller proportion of them will ultimately remain unmarried than among earlier cohorts. The decline in the age at marriage has been very rapid, and the marriage pattern revealed in recent data for several Western countries is unprecedented in the period for which statistical records exist. (In most Western European countries this is about one hundred years; in the Scandinavian countries some data are available for the end of the eighteenth century.) The extent to which different socio-economic groups have participated in this change in marriage patterns may give important clues to its significance. The present paper deals with the contrasts between urban and rural areas and with analysis by level of education. A subsequent paper will cover materials relating to economic groups. The data at present available on these subjects are fragmentary and the results sug-