Men's Commitment Research Articles

Supporting allies in counterinsurgency: Britain and the Dhofar Rebellion

From 1964 to 1975 a small group of British officers, advisors, and trainers guided the forces of the Sultanate of Oman to victory in their conflict with the Marxist insurgents of the People's Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG). This campaign provides a clear example of how to effectively support an ally's counterinsurgency efforts with a minimal commitment of men and material. In particular, the critical assistance provided by the British consisted of experienced leadership and skilled technical support personnel as well as a viable strategy for victory. However, more important for the ultimate success of the counterinsurgency campaign was the emergence of new progressive leadership with the accession of Sultan Qaboos. The most important lesson from this study is that while security assistance can reinforce positive political efforts, it is not enough on its own to bring about a victory in an unfavourable political environment.

Premarital Cohabitation, Husbands' Commitment, and Wives' Satisfaction with the Division of Household Contributions

Recent research suggests that cohabiting men with plans to marry do more housework than those without plans to marry. Building on mis finding and drawing from commitment theory, we asked whether premarital cohabitation history and husbands' commitment were associated with satisfaction with the division of household contributions in marriage (N = 171 couples). There were no significant effects of cohabitation history (i.e., whether the couple started cohabiting before planning marriage versus after planning or not until marriage) on satisfaction with the division of household contributions during the early years of marriage. However, husbands' dedication was associated with wives' levels of satisfaction with the division of household contributions, even after controlling for marital adjustment and wives' own dedication. The practical implications of these links between men's commitment and women's satisfaction with the division of household contributions are discussed.

Work/Life Balance, Gender Equity and Social Change

‘Work/life balance’ as a contemporary issue is fundamentally linked with gender justice. The issue emerged from historical transformations of the gender order, in which masculinities and femininities were attached to distinct spheres of home and workplace; but this institutional division has been weakening. Current dilemmas are documented in a field study of gender equity issues in ten public sector worksites. Because domestic labour is still predominantly women's work, ‘family friendly’ workplace policies mainly serve to support women's domestic commitments. Women are held accountable for managing the balance, though this has now also become part of the work of managers. Other aspects of public sector restructuring work against men's commitment to domestic equality. In these circumstances the ideal of ‘balance’ is itself open to debate. The ideological consequences of the re‐inscription of maternity and contemporary anxieties about masculinity require a renewal of the concept of the common good as a basis of policy.

Conversation with Timothy Cook.

Conversation with Timothy Cook.

Identification and the Commitment Shift: Accounting for Gender Differences in Relationship Illusions

Previous work revealed gender differences in relationship illusions. Women, and not men, perceived their dating partners more favorably than their partners' self-perceptions. In two studies, the authors replicated these findings and showed they are moderated by relationship commitment but not by relationship satisfaction. Dating men low in commitment devalued their partners' virtues, whereas those high in commitment exaggerated their partners' virtues compared to their partners' self-perceptions. In contrast, dating women showed relationship illusions irrespective of their commitment. In Study 2, similar results were obtained with relationship-specific identification. Moreover, men's commitment mediated the effect of identification with the relationship. This suggests that gender differences in relationship identities exist at a general level and that men need to identify with and then commit to a specific relationship before they exhibit pro-relationship thinking, which women exhibit as general dispositions.

Making genes, making waves: a social activist in science

In 1969, Jon Beckwith and his colleagues succeeded in isolating a gene from the chromosome of a living organism. Announcing this startling achievement at a press conference, Beckwith took the opportunity to issue a public warning about the dangers of genetic engineering. Jon Beckwith's book, the story of a scientific life on the front line, traces one remarkable man's dual commitment to scientific research and social responsibility over the course of a career spanning most of the postwar history of genetics and molecular biology. A thoroughly engrossing memoir that recounts Beckwith's halting steps toward scientific triumphs - among them, the discovery of the genetic element that turns genes on - as well as his emergence as a world-class political activist, Genes, Making Waves is also a compelling history of the major controversies in genetics over d<@the last 30 years. Presenting the science in easily understandable terms, Beckwith describes the dramatic changes that transformed biology between the late 1950s and our day, the growth of the radical science movement in the 1970s, and the personalities involved throughout. He brings to light the differing styles of scientists as well as the different ways in which science is presented within the scientific community and to the public at large. Ranging from the travails of Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb to the Human Genome Project and recent Science Wars, Beckwith's book provides a sweeping view of science and its social context in the latter half of the 20th century.

Two Careers, One Employer: Couples Working for the Same Corporation

Advances in career development research require scholars to move from analysis of the career paths of individuals to a life course approach to the interlocking career paths of couples. Increasingly, not only are U.S. workers married to other workers, but significant numbers of couples work for the same employer. Drawing on a subsample of employees in dual-earner households in five corporations in upstate New York (and their spouses), this study examines both the direct and indirect effects of being a coworker on career development, work circumstances, and spillover. Being part of a coworking couple positively predicts men's job prestige, tenure, and commitment to work (in terms of working long hours, heavy workload, etc.). These effects, as well as spillover, are most pronounced for younger men without children. For wives, coworking corresponds with increased income and increased spillover between work and family, especially for younger coworking women without children.

Gender and Social Security: Some Lessons from Europe

Different social security schemes affect men and women differently. This article compares the family or single earner model with the individual or dual earner model and examines their impact on gender inequality. However, even where social security schemes are designed to be gender neutral, when applied in a context that is systematically structured by gender, it points out that they will have a different impact on men and women. The article examines the ways in which supposedly gender-neutral rules, in sickness benefit, survivors' pensions and old age pensions have affected men and women in Sweden and concludes that, if countries wish to achieve equal economic outcomes for men and women, they will need to introduce measures to equalise men's and women's commitments to the home and the labour market, and to enable women to attain higher-paid jobs on the same basis as men.

Conditional Fatherhood: Identity Theory and Parental Investment Theory as Alternative Sources of Explanation of Fathering

Two alternative theoretical models of parenting, identity theory and parental investment theory, are investigated as sources of explanation of men's fathering attitudes and behaviors. Four dimensions of fathering are explored: responsivity, harshness, behavioral engagement, and affective involvement. Concepts from identity theory operationalized as predictors include father role salience, role satisfaction, and reflected appraisals. From parental investment theory, concepts included investment maximization, contingent commitment, and paternity certitude. Using telephone survey data drawn from a community‐based probability sample of 208 fathers, each of the four individual indicators of fathering and a composite fathering measure were regressed against the theoretical predictors in hierarchical regression analyses. Both theoretical models were significant, with identity theory predictors accounting for a greater proportion of variance than the parental investment theory predictors. This study underlines the importance of social psychological variables to understanding variations in men's commitments to children.

Error management theory: A new perspective on biases in cross-sex mind reading.

A new theory of cognitive biases, called error management theory (EMT), proposes that psychological mechanisms are designed to be predictably biased when the costs of false-positive and false-negative errors were asymmetrical over evolutionary history. This theory explains known phenomena such as men's overperception of women's sexual intent, and it predicts new biases in social inference such as women's underestimation of men's commitment. In Study 1 (N = 217), the authors documented the commitment underperception effect predicted by EMT. In Study 2 (N = 289), the authors replicated the commitment bias and documented a condition in which men's sexual overperception bias is corrected. Discussion contrasts EMT with the heuristics and biases approach and suggests additional testable hypotheses based on EMT.

Women‐friendly HRM and organizational commitment: A study among women and men of organizations in Hong Kong

This study found that women‐friendly policies are not prevalent in organizations in Hong Kong. To ascertain if organizations that are more women‐friendly have more committed employees, working men and women in the territory were surveyed. Controlling for ‘national origin of organization’, the research results indicate that family‐ and work‐related factors impact on both women's and men's organizational commitment. But women‐friendly policies have a positive impact only on women—and only on their affective commitment, not on continuance commitment. The finding indicates that employees who are more likely to benefit directly from progressive policies that symbolize concern for them would become psychologically more attached to their organizations than those who perceive little value in the policies for their work lives.

Religion, well-being, and civic participation among African American men: A national comparison

Two of the largest rallies ever held in the nation's capital were the 1995 Million Man March and the Promise Keepers rally of 1997. More remarkable than the size of these events is the fact that (a) both were spiritual in nature, (b) participation in each was restricted to males, and (c) participants of the Mill ion Man March were exclusively African Americans whereas the Promise Keepers rally was predominately attended by whites. Both sought to increase the spiritual commitment of men in bettering the condit ions of their families and communit ies. The assumption underlying the mobilization of these movements is that spirituality is positively related to a sense of well-being and other-directedness. While some point out that African American men perceive spirituality to be an important concept

The Effects of Transitions in Marital Status on Men's Performance of Housework

Using data from the two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households, I analyze the impact of transitions in marital status on changes in men's time spent in housework. The transitions occur among five marital statuses: never married, cohabiting, married, separated, and widowed. I find that men reduce the time they spend in routine housework when they form couple households and increase it when they leave couple households. In contrast, women increase the time they spend doing housework when they enter coresidential unions and reduce it when they exit. This finding suggests that, with respect to housework time at least, the formation of households with adult partners of the opposite gender remains more to men's advantage than to women's. Key Words: cohabitation, divorce, gender, housework, marriage. Suddenly men are hot topic. So begins Gerson's recent study (1993) of changes in men's commitments to their families and work. There is growing scholarly interest in the erosion of men's roles as primary breadwinners and their undertaking more complex and differentiated set of familial responsibilities, including those of household labor (e.g., Coltrane, 1996). Despite this increasing interest in men's family roles, however, our knowledge of the dynamics of men's housework behavior remains meager. Although we know that there have been substantial changes at the aggregate level-men's housework hours per week increased from an average of 4.6 in 1965 to almost 10 in 1985 (Robinson, 1988)-the existing empirical literature is practically silent on the possible causes of changes in individual men's housework behavior. Specifically, previous research has ignored the effects of transitions in household and marital status on individuals' performance of housework. With the exception of South and Spitze (1994), the quantitative literature has examined only the division of housework in existing couple households (Berk, 1985; Blair & Lichter, 1991; Coverman, 1985; England & Farkas, 1986; Huber & Spitze, 1983; Shelton & John, 1993). Hence, although we know something about the hours that men and women in couple households spend doing housework, we do not understand how those hours are affected by household formation or dissolution. I report the first multivariate longitudinal analysis to date of the impact of transitions in marital status on men's time spent doing housework. I use data from both waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) to answer the questions: How do men change their housework time when they move in and out of marital or cohabiting unions with women, and how do those changes compare with changes made by women who experience transitions in marital status? My longitudinal analysis provides better understanding of the causal link between marital status and housework time than does existing cross-sectional research. The temporal ordering of transitions in marital status and changes in housework time is relatively unambiguous. Although it is possible that men and women change their housework hours in anticipation of such transitions, it is more likely that the transitions precede changes in housework time. Hence, I provide clearer specification of the causal relationship between marital status and housework time than has been available to date. BACKGROUND I draw on the ideas of doing gender, perspective that views domestic labor as process by which individuals define their gender identities. In their seminal article on this concept, West and Zimmerman (1987) argue that gender should be understood as a routine accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction (p. 125). That is, gender is enacted and affirmed continuously by individuals through their interactions with other individuals. Coresidential heterosexual unions are the smallest interactional units in which individuals establish their gender identities through daily activities, for example, their performance of housework. …

Single Mothers by Choice

Single Mothers by Choice* This study used in depth qualitative interviews with ten women who chose to become single mothers to describe multiple individual and social contextual factors that women felt made their nontraditional choice possible. A grounded theory analysis revealed that for this sample of educated, financially autonomous women, single motherhood was chosen with support from family, friends, employers, clergy, physicians, and sometimes the foreign adoption industry. These results give a new face and voice to the single mother, expanding our understanding of postmodern families. Key Words: lone mothers, mothers by choice, self-sufficient mothering, single mothers, solo mothers. Single-mother households constitute a significant part of the contemporary American family profile. In 1970, homes maintained by a mother with children under 18 made up 12% of the U.S. total. Single-mother homes rose to 19% in 1980, to 24% in 1990, and to 26% in 1995. Nonmarital births have increased in all age groups from 15 to over 35 years of age. In 1970, 10.7% of all births were to unmarried women; by 1993, this had grown to 31%. By 1994, 37.8% of all births were to unmarried women; of these, 20.6% were births to unmarried women between the ages of 30 and 44 years (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1996). This demographic change in the American family has been met with different responses. Some scholars take a pessimistic view seeing the family in decline, the father vanishing from the lives of children, the loss of traditional values, and a breakdown of the social order (Blankenthorn, 1995; Popenoe, 1993). Others hold a postmodern view suggesting families are not declining but changing, with new family configurations emerging to cope with new work and social patterns (Stacey, 1993, 1996). Some emphasize that women's choices are influenced by economic forces (Gerson, 1985) and by men's changing attitudes and commitment to family life (Gerson, 1993, 1997). Researchers do not agree on the reasons for widespread, nonmarital births. Many believe that mother-only families result from a breakdown of a stable family or death of the father. In academia, the bias that single-mother families are a misfortune rather than a choice remains (Miller, 1992). This concentration on the negative does not sufficiently incorporate an understanding of the variance in this population group. A notable exception to this approach is Burns and Scott's (1994) study describing and explaining the increase in single mothering worldwide. This was not, however, an ethnographic study that would allow us to hear from single mothers in their own voice. Though divided in interpretation of the trends, little disagreement has been voiced that change is occurring (Stacey, 1993; Glenn, 1993; Cowan, 1993; Popenoe, 1993). Single mothers in the United States and worldwide represent an ever-growing proportion of the adult population (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1996), and the proportion of mothers who are single is growing across all socioeconomic groups (Thompson & Gongla, 1983). While there is slow but growing acceptance of single mothers in the popular press (e.g., Leslie, 1994; Ludtke, 1997) and some self-help efforts have surfaced to even encourage this family form (Mattes, 1994; Saffron, 1994), most scholarly research and public policy continues to focus on negative aspects of single mothering. Concern is justifiable considering the disproportionate levels of poverty found in mother-headed families, their social consequences, and their intersection with race, class, and gender inequities (Foster, Jones, & Hoffman, 1998; Garfinkel & McLanahan, 1986; McLanahan & Booth, 1989; McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994; Polokow, 1993). Taking a lifecourse approach enriched by a feminist perspective, this study focused on a subgroup of single mothers that has not received much scholarly attention: financially independent, adult women who are single mothers by choice. …

Sex Differences in Jealousy: Not Gone, Not Forgotten, and Not Explained by Alternative Hypotheses

More than a decade before there were systematic etnpirical tests of the proposition, evolutionary psychologists hypothesized that men and women would differ psychologically in the weighting given to the cues that trigger sexual jealousy (Daly, Wilson, & Weghorst, 1982: Symons, 1979). Because fertilization occurs internally within women, over hutnan evolutionary history men have recurrently faced an adaptive problem not faced by women—the problem of uncertainty in their genetic parentage of offspring. Sexual infidelities by a man's mate would have compromised his paternity, threatening the loss of his investments, commitments, and mating effort, as well as his partner's parental effort—all of which risked getting channeled to another man's children. Men's jealousy, therefore, has been hypothesized to be triggered by cues to .sexual infidelity. Over human evolutionary history women did not face the adaptive problem of maternity uncertainty. The internal fertilization of a woman's own eggs meant that the certainty in her genetic parentage did not deviate from 1009?. From an ancestral woman's perspective, however, infidelities by her regular mate could have been enormously damaging. The man's time, energy, commitment, parental investment, and resources could get channeled to another woman and her children. For these reasons, evolutionary psychologists have hypothesized that women's jealousy would be triggered by cues to the long-term diversion of such commitments, such as a man's emotional involvement with another woman (Daly et al., 1982; Symons, 1979). Emotional involvement and sexual infidelity are clearly correlated events in everyday life, and hence both sexes are predicted to be attuned to both sources of strategic interference (Buss, 1989; Buss, Larsen, Westen, & Semmelroth, 1992). But these events can and do occur without one another: A casual sexual encounter need not entail emotional involvement, and deep emotional involvement can occur in the absence of sexual intercourse. The sexes are predicted to differ in the weighting of the cues to these two kinds of infidelity, with men more intensely focused on sexual and women on emotional infidelity. DeSteno and Salovey (DS, this issue) have proposed an alternative explanation, the hypothesis, to account for empirically discovered sex differences corresponding to the evolutionary predictions. Harris and Christenfeld's (HC, this issue) logical belief is a variant of this alternative. The double-shot hypothesis proposes that the obtained sex differences are due not to evolved psychological differences, but rather to different beliefs (in some groups of men and

No man's land: men's changing commitments to family and work

No man's land: men's changing commitments to family and work

Cross-level analysis of the influence of local union structure on women's and men's union commitment.

Cross-level analysis of the influence of local union structure on women's and men's union commitment.

Identity and dating commitment among women and men in college

Lower division and upper division college women's and men's commitment in a dating relationship was examined in connection with their (a) gender role attitudes, (b) educational aspirations, (c) certainty about their future vocation, and (d) the importance they attach to work vs. marriage as a source of life satisfaction. Dating commitment was also examined for women in relation to their dedication to work for pay after marriage, and for men in terms of their ideas about their future wife working. The more certain upper division college women's vocational identity, the more committed they were to their dating partner, but the more they planned to work after marriage the less involved they were in a relationship. Additionally, upper division women who placed more importance on a job than marriage and who had a clearer vocational identity were less involved in a relationship. The clearer upper division men's vocational identity, the more committed they were in a relationship. Lower division men who placed more importance on work compared to marriage were less involved in a dating relationship. The results are discussed in light of Erikson's stages of identity development and more recent research that suggests women's identity development follows a different course from men's.

Gender, Work, and Stress: The Potential Impact of Role-Identity Salience And Commitment

In a period when most women and men combine work and family roles, the relationship between these roles and stress is of particular importance. Using an identity theory perspective, this study focuses primarily on gender differences in the sources and levels of stress associated with these roles. An identity-based perspective provides a more parsimonious way to address this issue than the frequently employed gender specific models. Based on differences in the meaning and salience of and commitment to work and family role identities, this study predicts gender differences in identity-linked sources of stress, and relates these to the results of prior stress research. Despite reliance on general norms to infer the salience and commitment of men and women to their work and family roles, and identity perspective demonstrates considerable promise.

Grateful slaves and self-made women: fact and fantasy in women's work orientations

Although job segregation concentrates women in the lowest status and lowest paid jobs in the workforce, women are disproportionately satisfied with their jobs. This paper assesses the strength of women's work commitment in Western industrial societies, and finds it to be markedly lower than men's work commitment. Work commitment is also found to be a powerful predictor of women's work decisions and job choices. The majority of women aim for a homemaker career in which paid work is of secondary or peripheral importance, with strong support from their husbands for this strategy. A minority of women are committed to work as a central life goal, achieving jobs at higher levels of status and earnings. The existence of these two discrete groups within the female workforce explains the paradox of women's high satisfaction with poor jobs, and helps explain the persistence of job segregation. We conclude that more refined and sociological indicators of workforce participation must be developed to replace the standard measures used by labour economists.