Value Of Children Research Articles

Social Mobility Across Three Generations

The transmission of values, status, and behaviors from one to the next has been a central concern to family sociologists over the past half century, in part because it sheds light on the family's role in reproducing or modifying the social structure through the socialization of children. One dimension of the debate over American family decline (Popenoe, 1993) is how social changes in the 20th century have affected family transmission of socioeconomic and cultural resources. By tracking members of subsequent generations down family lineages, Bengtson (1975) compared the level of transmission of values (or the generation gap) between two intergenerational dyads: parents (generation 1 or G1s) and their children (G2s) who came of age in the 1940s and 1950s and parents (G2s) and their children (G3s) who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s. The G3s were the grandchildren of the G1s. Thus the analysis involved three related generations rather than separate and unrelated birth cohorts. Bengtson found considerable value similarity between parents and children in both intergenerational dyads. Generation membership did not seem to condition the impact that parents' values had on children's values. This article uses a conceptual framework similar to Bengtson's (1975) to study the intergenerational transmission of occupational stratum across three generations of family members, spanning almost the entire 20th century. Our central research question is: Does condition the effect of the parents' occupational position on their children's occupational position? Drawing on the implications of four 20th-century social changes--expanding universalism, a shift in childrearing values from obedience to autonomy, the growth of alternative family structures, and changing gender roles--we predict that the effect of the status of parents on their children's occupational outcomes declines with each successive generation. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Generations, we compare the level of inheritance of socioeconomic strata experienced by three successive generations of offspring: grandparents (Generation 1--G1s, most born between 1896 and 1911), who inherit great grandparents' (Generation 0--G0s) socioeconomic positions; parents (Generation 2--G2s, most born between 1916 and 1931), who inherit G1s' socioeconomic positions; and adult children (Generation 3--G3s, most born between 1945 and 1955), who inherit G2s' socioeconomic positions. We assess how the experience of socioeconomic inheritance and social mobility for each of offspring differs from its parent generation's experience of socioeconomic inheritance and social mobility. For the analysis, we fit log-linear models of association to contingency tables, stratified by each generation's occupation at a particular stage in the life course and by gender. SOCIAL MOBILITY ACROSS INTERGENERATIONAL DYADS Mechanisms that give rise to the intergenerational inheritance of socioeconomic position include parental transmission of economic resources, parental transmission of cultural resources, role modeling, and discrimination (Biblarz & Raftery, 1993; Kalmijn, 1994). Parents' occupational positions covary with the amount of economic resources they have to invest in their children, and children's occupational destinations, in turn, covary with the amount of investment parents have made in their children's human capital (Becker, 1964; Becker & Tomes, 1986). The direct intergenerational transmission of property (such as farms and small businesses) can also lead to occupational inheritance (Elder, Rudkin, & Conger, 1995). When raising their children, parents transmit values about what makes up 'earning a living' (Hout, 1984, p. 1,384; also Biblarz, 1992; Kohn, 1977). Through role modeling, children may adopt these orientations for themselves. Kohn's work (Kohn, 1969, 1977; Kohn & Slomczynski, 1990) demonstrates links between parents' occupational conditions (substantive complexity, autonomy, routinization) and the importance parents place on conformity to external authority and, in turn, children's value orientations and children's occupational positions. …

Invited Commentary: Evolution of Epidemiologic Evidence on Magnetic Fields and Childhood Cancers

The initial reports in this issue of two new studies of childhood brain cancer and 60-Hz magnetic fields (1,2) illustrate a few general observations on evolving research in this area. Epidemiologic assessment of magnetic field exposures is still primitive. Magnetic field exposures come from many different sources. We should not be proud that we still study them one by one. Appliance-specific relative risks (one for blow dryers, one for curling irons, etc.) are the most glaring example. Time-activity data and magnetic flux density measurements are needed to quantify exposures from individual appliances. At a minimum, this information could be used to stabilize ensembles of appliance-specific relative risk estimates (3-6). Ideally, appliance exposures would be consolidated and combined with measures of exposure from power lines and other sources. Developing a program of combined-source magnetic field exposure assessment tailored for use in epidemiologic studies would be a challenging, but technically feasible, task. No methodological need is greater in this area of research. Responding to a private exhortation to work toward a multiappliance exposure measure, an epidemiologist once expressed to me a reluctance to apples and oranges. The simile was ironic. Combining fruits is exactly what is done in the more mature field of nutritional epidemiology to measure consumption of fructose and other nutrients. For power-line exposures, it has become clear that codes, i.e., magnetic field exposure measures based on characteristics of lines and their distances from residences, have substantial advantages over short-term flux density measurements in homes. The measurements, often made years after the case or control actually lived in the residence, are obviously limited by their temporal variability. Independently severe is the problem of missing data. Whether by design (1) or because of nonresponse (7), it is not uncommon for magnetic field measurements to be obtained for fewer than 50 percent of cases and controls. Relative risk estimates based on such small numbers of subjects are of highly limited value, whether viewed in isolation or in contrast to estimates based on wire codes. The in-home measurements should not be abandoned entirely, however. They have considerable value when used in conjunction with wire codes rather than as alternatives to them. Specifically, the measurements can provide exposure scores for wire code categories in dose-response analyses (8). Conducting such an analysis forces one to confront the fact that not all wire code categories appear to differ in exposure. If any principle of dose-response analysis is beyond dispute, it is that response should not vary when dose does not vary. It is therefore necessary to combine some of the wire code categories. The categories to combine may change from locale to locale and over time within a locale. In the report of their Los Angeles County study, Preston-Martin et al. (1) laudably focus on this issue. The authors present the case and control counts in each of the five wire code categories, but combine the second and third categories (very low and ordinary low) for data analysis. Only an anomalistically elevated relative risk estimate in the lowest (underground) category prevented them from combining the first three categories. Alternative analytic approaches could be defended, however. In the extreme, some of the more exposure-relevant measurements, e.g., median 24-hour child's bedroom values of 0.5, 0.6, 0.4, 0.6, and 1.1 mG, might have supported a decision to combine all categories but the highest. Unfortunately, the paper by Gurney et al. (2) does not provide quantitative information on magnetic flux density levels within wire code categories in western Washington State. Without such information, one cannot tell how strongly to interpret the resolutely null results the authors report for childhood brain cancer across the five wire code categories in that study.

Along the Rio Negro: Brazilian children's environmental views and values.

Along the Rio Negro: Brazilian children's environmental views and values.

Along the Rio Negro: Brazilian children's environmental views and values.

Children in urban and rural parts of the Brazilian Amazon were interviewed in Portuguese on how they understand and value their relationship with the natural environment. Forty-four 5th-grade children (mean age = 13 years, 8 months) participated. Children in both locations were aware of environmental problems, believed that throwing garbage in the Rio Negro harmed various parts of the environment (i.e., birds, insects, the view of the river, and people who live along the river), and cared that such harm might occur. Moreover, children believed that throwing garbage in the Rio Negro constituted a violation of a moral obligation. Children supported the conservation of the Amazon rain forest. Additional analyses showed striking similarities between this Brazilian population and a population of African American urban children in the United States

The child's right to a family environment. Why children's rights and family values are compatible.

Critics of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (U.N. General Assembly, 1989) have lobbied against its ratification on the grounds that its impact in the United States would be antifamily. Careful reading of the Convention shows, however, that it not only is supportive of strong families but offers a creative and conceptually coherent foundation for government action to promote and protect family life.

Swedish Reaction to the Assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme

Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot dead, on a street in central Stockholm, on his way home from the cinema late in the evening of 28 February 1986. The Swedish public reacted with grief and horror. The emotional reactions to Prime Minister Palme's assassination were greater than expected. However, placed in an international context they are, nevertheless, relatively weak. In the analysis, the situation six and four years after the assassination will be compared with the situation three weeks after the event. The focus is on: what role, if any, the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme has played in the way in which Swedes and immigrants express their views on a number of important issues related to the murder and what effect, if any, it might have on the Swedish political culture and on the trust of the Swedes in the political and judicial system. The final argument that can be presented from this study of the connection between exposure to a dramatic event, such as the murder of a prime minister, and children's and adults' political values, is that the emotional effect of the assassination fades away fairly quickly and is replaced by a much more vague and unclear structural effect related to the total impact of the assassination seen as a dramatic event of national importance. This kind of structural effect on the political culture in a country can never be clearly described and analysed for the simple reason that an effect of this magnitude is almost impossible to control and isolate from other experiences.

Environmental Views and Values of Children in an Inner-City Black Community

Environmental Views and Values of Children in an Inner-City Black Community

Environmental Views and Values of Children in an Inner-City Black Community

72 children across grades 1, 3, and 5 (mean ages, 7-5, 9-6, and 11-4) from an economically impoverished inner-city Black community were interviewed on their views and values about the natural environment. Assessments were made on whether children were aware of environmental problems, discussed environmental issues with their family, valued aspects of nature, and acted to help the environment. Additional assessments pertained to the prescriptivity and generalizability, and supporting justifications, of children's normative environmental judgments based on a hypothetical scenario that involved polluting a waterway. Overall, children showed sensitivity to nature and awareness of environmental problems, although attenuated by both developmental and cultural factors. Most children believed that polluting a waterway was a violation of a moral obligation. Children's environmental moral reasoning largely focused on homocentric considerations (e.g., that nature ought to be protected in order to protect human welfare). With much less frequency, children focused on biocentric considerations (e.g., that nature has intrinsic value or rights). Findings are discussed in terms of moral-developmental theory, and the place of social-cognitive research in understanding the human relationship to the natural environment.

Values in Children's Sport: Spontaneously Expressed Values Among Young Athletes

Values are considered to be a major influence on sport behaviour. The values underlying sports participation among young (12-16 yrs) football and tennis players (n=93) were examined by discussion of sport-specific moral dilemmas. Eighteen sport-relevant values which showed good correspondence with recent formulations of value structures were identified. Moral dilemmas in sport are explained as a conflict between competing types of values. It is suggested that examination of the values of significant others may explain value development in young athletes.

Role of age on transmitral flow velocity patterns in assessing left ventricular diastolic function in normal infants and children

This study demonstrated that both peak E and flow velocity integral of early diastole increased to reach the older children's values by 36 months of age and leveled off thereafter, whereas both peak A and flow velocity integral of atrial contraction had little change. These results suggest that age-related changes in E wave reflect the maturational or developmental alterations in LV diastolic properties, especially in the relaxation process.

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child: Its Relevance for Social Scientists

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child: Its Relevance for Social Scientists

Salivary cortisol in maltreated children: Evidence of relations between neuroendocrine activity and social competence

AbstractSalivary cortisol concentrations (10:30–11:30 a.m.) and social behavior (observations and teacher reports) were examined in 33 maltreated (26 boys) and 16 comparison (8 boys) children. The maltreated children were studied for 31 days while they attended a therapeutic preschool for abused and neglected children. Children in the comparison sample were studied while attending a preschool serving economically disadvantaged families. Each child's cortisol values over days were used to compute measures of basal activity (median cortisol) and reactivity (ratio of quartile ranges). Median cortisol was not significantly correlated with social behavior measures. Cortisol reactivity was positively correlated with social competence and negatively correlated with shy/internalizing behavior. Maltreated children exhibited less cortisol reactivity then did comparison children. Maltreated children also scored lower in social competence and higher in shy/internalizing and acting out/externalizing behaviors. In additional analyses, maltreated children failed to show elevations in cortisol on days of high versus low social conflict in the classroom. Social competence was also found to correlate positively with cortisol levels on high-conflict days. In all, the results suggest a reduction in cortisol reactivity in maltreated children related to the impairment in social competence frequently noted among these children.

Expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation: A developmental perspective

I consider Eccles et al.'s (1983) expectancy-value model of achievement performance and choice from a developmental perspective, by examining how recent research on the development of young children's competence beliefs, expectancies for success, subjective task values, and achievement goals can be incorporated into the model. The kinds of change in children's achievement beliefs considered include change in the factor structure of children's competence beliefs and values; change across age in the mean level of those constructs; and change in children's conceptions of ability beliefs and subjective values. I also discuss how achievement goals are conceptualized in this model, and how goals are conceived by other current motivation researchers. Changes in the nature of relations among competence beliefs, subjective task values, achievement goals, and achievement behaviors also are considered.

Alia Ahmad. Women and Fertility in Bangladesh. New Delhi: Sage Publications. 1991. 184 pp.Price: Indian Rs 185.

A book on the relationship between the status of women and fertility, Ahmad's study is based on the available literature on the subject as well as empirical findings from a small group of women in two villages and Dhaka city in Bangladesh. The book comprises eight chapters, out of which the first four are devoted to a review of earlier studies and description of macro-level information on the determination of women's status and fertility in traditional societies, including Bangladesh. Then, based on the information collected from 58 rural and 20 urban women, the next three chapters present empirical results on the status of women in the context of their perceptions about the value of children, the demand for children and the costs of fertility regulation. Each chapter, with a summary at the end, provides a variety of arguments and some evidence on those aspects of women's status in Bangladesh which are an outcome of the social and economic processes that tend to perpetuate insecurity among a majority of women. The insecurity is regarded as conducive to the high demand for children and preference for sons. The book, thus, is not only a good source of information on theoretical linkages between women's status and fertility but also provides some evidence on the related issues in the context of Bangladeshi society.

The development of achievement task values: A theoretical analysis

In this article we present a theoretical analysis of the nature and development of children's achievement task values. Our approach builds on traditional expectancy-value theory and also on a model of achievement choice developed by Eccles and her colleagues. We discuss different theoretical components of achievement values and present empirical evidence for these components. Existing work on how children's achievement values change across the elementary and secondary school years is reviewed, and hypotheses are provided for how the components of achievement values become differentiated across the school years. We discuss the work on achievement goals from the perspective of how children's achievement values could influence their goals. Suggestions are made for revising and expanding Eccles and her colleagues' expectancy-value model of achievement choice.

Parent-child relationships in nutrient intake: the Framingham Children's Study

Nutrient intake affects many of the identified risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD). Although CHD risk factors have been shown to aggregate within families, less is known about the familial aggregation of nutrient intake. We analyzed diet records for an average of 9 d per subject on 87 mothers, 83 fathers, and 91 children aged 3-5 y. A statistically significant but modest correlation (r less than 0.50) was found between parents' and children's intakes for most nutrients. The intake of nutrients was more strongly related between mothers and children than between fathers and children, and there was a stronger association with children's values for parents consuming more meals at home. The results of this study confirm that parents' eating habits have an impact on the nutrient intake of their preschool children; the study furnishes indirect support for dietary-intervention programs targeting families for the primary prevention of CHD.

Dimensions of Value of Children on Small Family

Dimensions of Value of Children on Small Family

Relationship of Maximal Lactate Steady State to Performance at Fixed Blood Lactate Reference Values in Children

This investigation set out to estimate exercise intensity and blood lactate corresponding to the maximal lactate steady state (MLaSS) and also examined the relationship between performance at the MLaSS with performance at fixed blood lactate reference values of 2.5 and 4.0 mmol•1−1. Cardiopulmonary responses at peak treadmill exercise and blood lactate reference values were measured in 10 boys and 8 girls ages 13-14 years. The 2.5 mmol•11 reference value represented 84±7% peak VO2 in boys and 82±6% peak VO2 in girls. Corresponding values at the 4.0 mmol•1−1 level were 93±6% and 90±5% peak VO2. MLaSS occurred at 77±7% peak VO2 in boys and 76±7% peak VO2 in girls. Blood lactate at the MLaSS was 2.1±0.5 mmol•l−1 in boys and 2.3±0.6 mmol•l−1 in girls. Cardiopulmonary and heart rate responses at the MLaSS were not significantly different from corresponding responses at the 2.5 mmol•l−1 reference value. In contrast, cardiopulmonary responses at the 4.0 mmol•l−1 reference level were significantly higher than those at the MLaSS. These data indicate that a 2.5 mmol•l−1 criterion for assessing aerobic performance in children may be the most appropriate.

Mean length of utterance and the acquisition of Irish

One of the most widely used indices of language development is a measure of utterance length in morphemes (MLUm). This study examines the applicability of MLUm to the acquisition of Irish. MLUm was calculated for data from Cian, aged 1; 11-3; 0. Even when an attempt was made to 'assume the maximum' by counting all possible morphemes, the correlation between a morpheme MLU (MLUm) and a word count MLU (MLUw) was very high (0.99). This points to MLUw being as effective a measure of Irish development as MLUm, as well as being easier to apply and more reliable. MLUw was calculated for the two younger children in the study (Eibhlís 1; 4-2; 1 and Eoin 1; 10-2; 6). An examination of the relationship between the three children's MLUw values and their grammatical complexity as measured on ILARSP (the Irish adaptation of LARSP) indicates that MLUw is a useful preliminary index for early development in Irish. However, further data are necessary to check whether MLUw loses its predictive relationship with grammatical complexity after a certain point. The study emphasizes the caution necessary in applying MLU to languages whose acquisition has not hitherto been studied, and underlines the role of MLU as a preliminary measure, which must not be overinterpreted.

Kipling and Scouting, or "Akela, We'll Do Our Best"

Kipling and Scouting, or "Akela, We'll Do Our Best" Richard Flynn (bio) Speaking of Rudyard Kipling's deservedly obscure collection of stories, Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides (1923), Gillian Avery argues that Kipling "should never be thought of as the type of the official writer to [Lord] Baden Powell," the founder of the Scouting movement in England. Avery speculates that the Jungle Books are not as popular among children as they ought to be because "the official hand of the Scout movement has helped to deaden them" (115). "All the ritual of the Wolf Cubs," she writes, "is derived from the first Jungle Book. Cubs weekly stalk and kill Shere Khan the Tiger and Tabaqui the Jackal, so that for many the jungle is overlaid by the thought of a dusty church hall and little boys in green caps chanting 'Akela, we'll do our best'" (115). Avery's point is well-taken, and it is even further supported by such curiosities as the 1967 Boy Scouts of America Wolf Cub Scout Book, in which Mowgli is a little American Indian boy, "who thought what fun he and the other boys would have playing as wolves" and in which Akela is a human being, "the Big Chief of the Webelos" whose "law of the forest" is "live and help live." Mowgli's brothers, likewise, are brave Indian warriors, "unmatched in battle and fierce in attack," but "very kind to their women and children" (vi-xiv). The 1984 Bear Cub manual restores Kipling's character names to cartoonish versions of the Kipling characters, but only to use them to deliver a didactic message: How Balloo taught Mowgli to "Just Say No" (6-9). Although the Kipling we value as a children's writer tells powerful stories antithetical to this kind of pabulum, there is also, unfortunately, the Kipling who lends his official imprimatur to just such bowdlerization of his texts. As pioneering essays by Edmund Wilson and Randall Jarrell make clear, Kipling labored his whole life under a fundamental conflict between the childhood paradise he knew in India during the first six years of his life and the childhood hell he knew during the next six—his sentence in the famous "House of Desolation" where his parents had left him and his sister at the mercy of Mrs. Holloway (or Auntie Rosa as she is called in the brilliant autobiographical story, "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep"). Despite the fact that Kipling's "best of parents," as Jarrell puts it, were responsible for leaving him with the woman who "introduced" him to Hell "and all its terrors," Kipling would never openly blame them. On the surface, Jarrell argues, Kipling "extenuated everything, blamed for nothing," all the while denying the part of himself that "extenuated nothing, blamed for everything" (341). It is the Kipling of the Mowgli stories and of Kim, that readers of children's literature value today, the work in which we detect the tensions "between two worlds"—the worlds of innocence and experience, child and adult, animal and human. We respond most deeply, I think, to the Kipling that wants to extenuate nothing, blame for everything, but who, like a child, is afraid to risk displeasing those "best of parents." Indeed, in concentrating on the work in which Kipling wrestles with his Daemon, we often disregard the fact that this creative genius of the first order was often a jingoistic moron. Even if we don't completely accept S.P. Mohanty's argument in the essay "Kipling's Children and the Colour Line" that "restored to their colonial context, Kipling's Mowgli and Kim...tell a distinct and specifiable political story in which [End Page 55] adventure is indistinguishable from surveillance, pleasure intertwined with power, and the values of childhood a thin allegory for imperial ideology" (31) we can all agree that Kipling, perhaps uneasily, endorsed Great Britain's measures to shore up an embattled empire. Indeed, though he recognizes that it caused Kipling a certain amount of tension, Angus Wilson admits that "Kipling meant every word of his Imperial beliefs" (205). In his association with the Scouting Movement, Kipling either tacitly approves of or actively endorses...