Marital Structure Research Articles

Доля и структура ассортативных браков по глухоте в Республике Бурятия

It is currently accepted that the reproductive capabilities of deaf people increase over time, and marriages between deaf people occur according to the principle of assortativity, which in total can lead to an increase in the frequency of one major autosomal recessive form of deafness. In this regard, the purpose of this work was to analyze the share and structure of assortative marriages based on deafness in the Republic of Buryatia. The sample of deaf individuals consisted of 201 people (113 female and 88 male) aged from 21 to 77 years (mean age 46.7 ± 7.9 years). For analysis of the marriage structure of deaf people, information was available for 168 marriages. Individuals were considered married if they had a registered marriage and/or if they had common children. An assortative marriage (AM) was a marriage in which both partners were deaf. An AM in which all the children were deaf was considered non-complementary, and an AM in which all the children were hearing was considered complementary. Marriages in which there were both hearing and deaf children were designated as segregating. An analysis of the marriage structure of deaf people showed that the proportion of marriages between deaf individuals in Buryatia is 81.8% (122 out of 149 marriages analyzed), and in 18.2% of cases (27 marriages) marriages were concluded between deaf and hearing people. Among all AM, the share of complementary marriages was 86.9% (106 out of 122), non-complementary - 5.7% (7 out of 122) and segregating 7.3% (9 out of 122). It was revealed that with a high frequency of AM, the marital structure was characterized by a high proportion of complementary and low proportion of non-complementary and segregating AM, which may be explained by the peculiarities of the genetic structure of hereditary forms of hearing loss in the Republic of Buryatia. Keywords: hereditary hearing loss, assortative marriages, sign language, autosomal recessive deafness 1A (DFNB1A), Buryatia.

Брачная структура населения Коми края в конце XIX века

Based on materials of the First General Population Census of the Russian Empire, the marital structure of the population of the Komi Region is considered. A comparison of the marital status of rural and urban population is carried out. The gender and age differences in marital structure are analyzed. As a result of the study, the proportion of all categories of marital status, both men and women, were determined by individual age groups. Peculiarities in the demographic behavior of the population due to ethnicity and social status are revealed. In rural areas, the younger marriageable age up to 20 years was significantly dominated by people who had never been married, which was a consequence of the fairly mature marriageable age that had developed in the Komi Region. A tendency was also revealed to increase the number of widows among women from the age of 30-39, with the sharpest jump at the age of 50. Among men, the number of widowers increased slightly, a jump in this category of persons was observed in the age group of 60 years and older. The asymmetry of marital status was more pronounced in the urban population in the age groups of 40 years and older than in the rural population.

Women's socioeconomic status and attitudes toward intimate partner violence in Eswatini: A multilevel analysis.

Attitudes supportive of spousal violence retards developmental efforts worldwide, and in particular in patriarchal African settings. It is important to curb this behavior by designing preventative evidence-based policies. This study examines the acceptance of intimate partner violence among women residing in Eswatini and determines whether attitudes supportive of intimate partner violence are associated with women's low socioeconomic status both at the individual- and community-level. Cross-sectional secondary data from two Eswatini Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) conducted in 2010 and 2014 with representative samples of 4,686 and 4,761 women, respectively were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multilevel (random effect) logistic regressions. Overall, the prevalence of acceptance of intimate partner violence declined significantly between 2010 and 2014 in Eswatini (29.0% vs. 19.8%, p<0.001). In both surveys, socioeconomic factors associated with women's supportive attitudes toward intimate partner violence were educational level, marital structure, and community socioeconomic disadvantage. Overall, primary or lower educational attainment, single/unmarried relationships, and women living in a community with a high socioeconomic disadvantage were key factors associated with supportive attitudes toward intimate partner violence. Secondary or higher education for individual women and a high proportion of women in the community with low socioeconomic disadvantage are important socioeconomic predictors of reducing women's supportive attitudes toward intimate partner violence. Therefore, further gains in non-supportive attitudes toward acceptance of intimate partner violence could be achieved through efforts and intervention in the education of individual women and improving women's socioeconomic status in the community.

Marital structure and domestic gender role practice: implications for subjective well-being of working mothers teaching in Nigerian primary schools

ABSTRACT The study examined the association of marital structure and domestic gender role practice, with the subjective well-being of working mothers in Nigeria. Marital structure was measured as the type of marriage and living arrangement with husband, while domestic gender role practice was assessed as breadwinning and house chore role practices. Using a sample of 1320 married female primary school teachers, the study determined the prevalence of impaired well-being, and marriage type, living arrangement, breadwinning, and house chore role practice as predictors of well-being. A questionnaire and the English mental health continuum short form were used to collect data. Using IBM SPSS software version 23, demographic data were analysed in frequencies and percentages. Binary logistic regression was used to test three null hypotheses at p < 0.05. Findings showed a 36.2% prevalence of 'not flourishing' mental well-being. Polygamy, living away from the husband, and having the sole responsibility of house chores were associated with poorer well-being. The breadwinning role was not a significant factor. In conclusion, polygamy, living apart, and practising traditionalism in house chore roles might have negative implications for the subjective well-being of Nigerian working mothers. Therefore, Nigerian society should further evaluate the gender role expectations of working mothers.

Polygamy and mental health among Saudi middle schoolers: The role of family cohesion and father involvement

AbstractObjectiveThis paper assesses the role of family cohesion in the relationship between polygamy and mental health and whether this varies as a function of the father's involvement.BackgroundStudies show that polygamy has a detrimental effect on children's mental health, yet familial variables that may account for this relationship have rarely been explored. Family cohesion is crucial for the relationship between a range of familial risk factors and mental health.MethodData about family structure, family cohesion, mental health, father involvement, and other related sociodemographic variables were collected from students from randomly selected middle schools (students N = 758) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.ResultsPolygamous marital structure predicted more psychosocial problems and higher internalizing symptoms, but not externalizing problems. Polygamy had an indirect association with psychosocial problems through family cohesion, and father involvement moderated the relationship between polygamy and family cohesion.ConclusionThe findings suggest that living in polygamous families may impair the mental health of middle school–aged children, in part by diminishing family cohesion. Additionally, low father involvement may exaggerate threats to family cohesion resulting from polygamy and subsequent child mental health consequences. However, contrary to previous research, children's externalizing behavior did not vary by polygamous marital structure.ImplicationsFamily‐focused therapies, which include the fathers, may be of particular use to support this at‐risk group.

Changing family and marital structure in China: emotional strain at cultural and individual levels

This article examines the evolution of family and marital structure in modern China in the light of changes in China's culture, changing government policy and changes in the attitudes and situations of modern couples and families. The most dramatic changes involved the one-child policy, instituted in the late 1970s, that changed family structure from large male-preference families to single child families that enhanced the value of girls. Since sex was no longer mainly for procreation, it also revised the role of sexuality. The result was both to pamper the "only children" and increase the pressure on them both as children and as young adults, because this policy produced an ageing population without enough workers. The recent change in government policy to allow three children has not altered median family size as many young people do not want more children. There is also the lingering effect on families of China's history of trauma. Several clinical vignettes illustrate the complex mixture of forces at play in modern families.

Interchangeable Bodies: International Marriage and Migration in the Eighteenth-Century Moravian Church

This article investigates the extent to which the theology and structure of marriage within the German Moravian Church functioned to connect and grow the Church as an international network across the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century. Specifically, it argues that Moravian conceptions of marriage facilitated intentional international partnerships that led to the relocation and migration of many European women as Moravian missionaries throughout the eighteenth century. In some instances, early Moravians lived in sex-segregated communal housing and viewed sexual intercourse as a sacred unification with Christ, free of human desire. Part of the Moravian impetus to be “everywhere at home” required preventing individual congregational differences in order to create a larger international community. If the Church aimed to view all brothers and sisters as productive bodies to serve the growth of the community, then these bodies needed to be interchangeable and unrooted to a specific space. The premeditated practice of intermarriage between congregations meant that there were not individual groups that practiced the Moravian faith, but rather a singular global church family. Based on an analysis of Moravian missionary women's memoirs, this article begins to delve into the social and geographic mobility available to these eighteenth-century women through a nonnormative marital structure.

Family Poverty in Black and White: Results From a New Poverty Measure

Advances in poverty measurement have opened new opportunities for investigating differences in poverty among racial and ethnic groups. Some researchers have attributed differences in poverty to differences in group characteristics, such as marital status or educational attainment, whereas others have focused on labor market differences or to differential benefits from taxes and transfer payments. This paper brings together all of these approaches to investigate the history of Black–White poverty differentials for families with children from 1980 to 2014. We break the history of the Black–White poverty differential into three “eras”: 1980 to 1992, when the racial differential was largely driven by the business cycle; 1992 to 2002, when the racial differential was reduced substantially; and 2002 to 2014, when the differential could have been strongly influenced by the Great Recession, but was not. For each era, we examine the extent to which the changes in the poverty differential were influenced by changes in tax and transfer payment policy and by changes in family demographic and labor market characteristics. We find that labor market changes and changes in tax credits and transfer payments have strongly influenced the differential, though racial differences in marital structure, family work effort, and heads’ educational attainment also continue to play a role.

Childlessness among women of reproductive age in Serbia from a demographic perspective

The social, economic, and cultural changes that have taken place in Europe in the past few decades in the field of fertility have been accompanied by an increase in permanent childlessness. The childlessness level among women born in 1968 is 12% in Serbia, slightly below the European average (14%). The aim of this paper is to explore in more detail the level of childlessness in Serbia and the characteristics of women aged 15-49 without live births. Changes in childlessness over a 60-year period (1961-2020) by five-year age groups were analysed. The basic characteristics of childless women of reproductive age by education, marital status, and age were observed from 1991 to 2011. The paper is based on census and vital statistics data. The authors introduce two new indicators of childlessness: the general childlessness rate (GChR) as the share of women without live births in the total female population aged 15-49, and the age-specific childlessness rate (ASChR) as the percentage of childless women by age. Changes in cumulative fertility rates by age were less influenced by the reproductive behaviour of mothers and much more by an increase in the proportion of childless women. The general childlessness rate until 1991 was relatively stable in Serbia. Since then, it has increased intensely (from 30.1% in 1991 to 41.6% in 2011, and 43.4% in 2020). The increase in childlessness is largely a consequence of the postponement of first births, but also of the increase in permanent childlessness among women aged 45-49. The postponement of first births has occured in all age groups and the ASChR has increased across the board. In Serbia, in 2020, the ASChR reached record values for all five-year age groups (36.5% for women aged 30-34, 21.4% for ages 35-39), as did the level of permanent childlessness (13.8% for ages 45-49). The paper also analyses childlessness by education and marital status. According to census data (1991, 2002, and 2011), the general childlessness rate is lowest among women without any formal education and those who haven?t completed primary school, and highest among women with a primary education. Childlessness rates are particularly high among women in their thirties and forties. The influence of marital status on the level of childlessness was also confirmed. The GChR of single women was at least 10 times higher than the value for ever married women. The GChR ranged from 96% to 89% for single women and invariably slightly above 8% for ever married women. The results of direct standardization showed the greater importance of the changes that occurred between 1991 and 2011 by education and marital status of women aged 15-49 on the childlessness level, as well as their completely opposite effects compared to those caused by the change in the age structure. The large impact of changes in marital structure also indicates the possibility of a certain influence on reducing childlessness in Serbia. As the decreasein marriage is not accompanied by a higherprevalence of stable extramarital unions, it?s possible that the creation of more favourable circumstances for an independent life for young people and for forming a union could contribute to reducing the postponement of childbearing, and thus reducing childlessness during and at the end of the reproductive age. This is especially important considering that family and children are highly valued in Serbia. It should be noted that the high and growing shares of women without children in the 30-34 and 35-39 age groups limit the possibilities of reducing permanent childlessness, particularly in the near future.

Changing family and marital structure in China

The author summarises factors that have played on changing roles and configurations in Chinese marriages and families in the last seventy years, including the one-child policy, periods of national trauma, and the recent stresses on families as China becomes more urban, individualistic, and entrepreneurial. He gives two family vignettes, one a couple that faces the strain of different expectations for their marriage, and the other a family with a history of trauma, alcoholism, and a school refusing adolescent girl, illustrating how couples and families experience the strains on modern Chinese families.

Partnerships and production: Agriculture and polygyny in Tanzanian households

AbstractWomen make important contributions to household food production in sub‐Saharan Africa. Women's agricultural productivity is often reduced, however, by inefficient intrahousehold allocation of agricultural resources. Complex marital structures found in polygynous households may complicate resource allocation. Using three waves of the Tanzania Living Standards Measurement Survey–Integrated Survey on Agriculture, we measure the effect of the marital structure, wife position, and plot management on agricultural productivity and input allocations. We find evidence of cooperation within polygynous households. Plots managed by husbands and wives in polygynous households produce more valuable crops, have higher yields, and are more likely to use fertilizer than their monogamous counterparts. Within polygynous households, we observe that plots jointly managed by husbands, first wives, and second wives (together) have significantly more family labor than plots managed by husbands and first wives. This result may provide evidence of different production technologies across plot managers within the same households.

Distancias maritales: Salta (Argentina)

Se estimó la movilidad en once poblaciones de Puna, Valle Calchaquí y Valle de Lerma (Provincia de Salta) a partir de matrices de migración cónyuge-cónyuge, considerando las distancias entre los lugares de nacimiento de ambos. A partir de las distancias entre lugar de nacimiento y de residencia se estimó la migración diferencial por sexo en general, por zona geoestructural y por localidad. En general, los varones migran a mayores distancias que las mujeres. Para estimar patrilocalidad o matrilocalidad se consideraron las parejas con, al menos, un individuo local, tanto por zona como por localidad. En los Valles se observa un patrón de residencia matrilocal. Las tres zonas geoestructurales presentan una distribución asimétrica positiva, característica de poblaciones rurales endógamas. Del análisis de los resultados se desprende que, en las poblaciones estudiadas, el modelo de aislamiento por distancia no refleja la estructura marital de las mismas.

Why are there no Neolithic mega-sites in the Anatolian Euphrates basin A socio-archaeological approach to the marital structure of early farming societies

Why are there no Neolithic mega-sites in the Anatolian Euphrates basin A socio-archaeological approach to the marital structure of early farming societies

Demographic and Genetic Portraits of the Ulchi Population

The demographic parameters and Y-chromosomal variation in the Ulchi population, an indigenous ethnic group of Khabarovsk krai, were studied. The demographic portrait was compiled using the data from the books of rural household accounting (7521 records, including 1562 on Ulchi). The structure of the gene pool was characterized for 45 SNP markers of the Y chromosome: 52 DNA samples were analyzed. The total number of Ulchi in the period between the censuses of 1926–2002 showed stable growth (723–2913 individuals) and slightly decreased by 2010 (2765 individuals). The study revealed an imbalance in the sex ratio (SR = 1 : 1.7) and the age structure close to the stationary type and providing a simple type of reproduction of the Ulchi. Analysis of the marital structure demonstrated a high rate of assimilation of the Ulchi by the Russian-speaking population dominant in all places of their compact settlement. Analysis for the SNP markers of the Y chromosomes (23 haplogroups were found) revealed a strong similarity of the Ulchi to the populations of the Amur River region and Okhotsk coast and a relative proximity to the Central Asian populations as given by haplogroup C. Genotyping of five new SNP markers within haplogroup C and 17 STR markers provided a correct phylogenetic analysis of haplogroup C in the Ulchi and neighboring peoples. It did not confirm the powerful gene drift in the Ulchi, which one might expect owing to their low effective size, likely because the Ulchi population was subdivided and thus managed to retain its diversity. However, this analysis revealed traces of intense interaction of the Ulchi with the peoples of the Far East and Central Asia over the past one to three thousand years. Therefore, the results of a recent study of the similarity of the ancient genomes of Primorye with the Ulchi indicate not the uniqueness of the Ulchi but the fact that this ancient gene pool was preserved in a vast milieu of populations of the Far East interlaced with gene flows both with each other and with populations of Central Asia.

Marital Structure, Genetic Fitness, and the GJB2 Gene Mutations among Deaf People in Yakutia (Eastern Siberia, Russia)

Autosomal recessive deafness type 1A (DFNB1A) caused by mutations in the GJB2 gene (Cx26) is the main cause of nonsyndromic hearing impairment in many populations worldwide. It is considered that widespread prevalence of DFNB1A can be due to the long tradition of intermarriages between deaf people (assortative marriages) combined with their increased social adaptation and genetic fitness after widespread introduction of sign language. For the first time, the data on mating structure and reproduction of deaf people living in Yakutia (Eastern Siberia, Russia) are presented in comparison with contribution of the GJB2 gene mutations to the etiology of hearing impairment. The relative fertility of deaf people compared to their hearing siblings is 0.78 (mean number of children 1.76 ± 0.10 and 2.24 ± 0.09 to deaf and their hearing siblings, respectively, p = 0.0018). The rate of assortative marriages among deaf people is 77.1% (81 of 105 marriages). Biallelic mutations in the GJB2 gene were found in 42.2% (43 of 102) of examined deaf people, which corresponded to diagnosis DFNB1A for these patients. A comparison of deaf marital partners by GJB2 status revealed a proportion of noncomplementary marriages (24%) in which hearing loss in both partners was caused by the presence of biallelic GJB2 gene mutations resulting in the birth of only deaf children in such couples. Thus, the set of obtained data including a relatively high genetic fitness (expressed as relative fertility) of deaf people in Yakutia in combination with a high rate of assortative marriages among them and high incidence of DFNB1A indicates a possible weakening of selection against such trait as “deafness” and a possible increase in the frequency of GJB2 mutant alleles in subsequent generations.

Associations between women's perceptions of domestic violence and contraceptive use in seven countries in West and Central Africa

ObjectivesThis study examined associations of women’s attitudes toward domestic violence (DV) and contraceptive use in West and Central Africa. Study designWe used data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys for women in seven countries in West and Central Africa (2009–2011, n=80,055). Main outcome measureWe measured contraceptive use as none, traditional, or modern contraceptives.DV approval was measured as no, low, or high tolerance of wife beating. Multinomial logistic regression estimated odds of using traditional or modern methods versus none, adjusting for age, education, wealth, residence, parity, marital structure, spousal age-difference, and religion. ResultsMany women had no or low DV tolerance (41%, 44%, respectively); most used no contraception (81%). In adjusted results, women with low DV tolerance had lower odds of using traditional contraceptive methods (odds ratio, OR=0.87; 95% confidence interval, CI: 0.78–0.98) or modern methods (OR=0.86; 95% CI: 0.78–0.95) compared to women with no tolerance. Women with high DV tolerance had 28% lower odds of traditional contraceptive use (95% CI: 0.60–0.90), and 38% lower odds of modern contraceptive use (95% CI: 0.59–0.88) compared to women with no tolerance. ConclusionThe high prevalence of DV approval may threaten the success of programs aimed at improving women’s reproductive health, including contraceptive use.

Suburban Subversions: Swingers and the Sexual Revolution

This article discusses how the 1965 Supreme Court Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which narrowly defined marital privacy to include only monogamous and reproductive sex, contextualizes depictions of suburban swingers. Focusing on narratives of swingers in John Updike’s Couples and Rick Moody’s novel The Ice Storm, issues of privacy and surveillance complicate and problematize marital sexuality, making swinging difficult to sustain. The confluence of restrictive legal and liberal cultural discourses and their influence on marital relationships are depicted in the texts examined in this article, which offer insight into the problem of marital privacy. Updike’s novel Couples depicts swinging as a revolutionary act: in one sense, swinging upends the post war, conservative marital structure, and in another, it results in a “revolution,” a circuit back to where the couples began. This article then turns to Rick Moody’s 1994 novel The Ice Storm, which offers a retrospective look at suburban sexual excess and the negative impact this behavior had on the children of the privileged suburban enclave. The confluence of different legal, social, and cultural pressures on married couples to maintain normative sexual behavior cannot be overcome in these texts.

Registered Marital Status Structure of an Improved Administrative Population : Evaluation and Challenge

Registered Marital Status Structure of an Improved Administrative Population : Evaluation and Challenge

The Effects of Marital Culture and Social Structure on Marital Aspirations and Attitudes in “Fragile Families”

This research brings together insights from the fields of sociology and social work, providing an integrated study of marriage as a cultural and structural institution. The goals of the study are twofold: first, to empirically assess the predictive power of cultural versus structural elements of marital aspirations and attitudes among “fragile families”; second, to determine if the aforementioned relationship and outcomes differ by immigrant status. The results offer more support for the role of structure than the function of culture, suggesting that rather than demonizing disadvantaged families for having “defective” cultural values, policy planners and human service providers should recognize the importance of educational attainment and economic productivity in fragile families. Even populations most disposed to hold more “traditional” views of marriage and family life are constrained by the realities of structural disadvantage.

Below-replacement fertility of ethnic Indians in Fiji: a decomposition analysis of the components of changes in the total fertility rate

The population of Fiji consists of two major ethnic groups, Fijians and Indians; it also comprises other groups, such as Europeans, Chinese and other Pacific Islands. The 2007 Census showed that there were 56.8 % Fijians and 37.5 % Indians, with the remaining 5.7 % consisting of other groups. This paper examines ethnic variation in fertility using current fertility estimated directly from the census data. As the Fiji census continued to gather information on the relationship of mothers with their own children, this information has been used to estimate fertility trends over the past 15 years preceding the census by the application of the own-children method. Fiji has recently undergone a spectacular decline in fertility but with a marked variation between Fijians and Indians. The total fertility rate (TFR) among Indians dropped to 2.8 in 1986 and 2.5 in 1996. It continued to decline further, approaching below the replacement fertility of 1.9 in 2007. By contrast, Fijian fertility reached 3.9 in 1996. As with that of Indians, Fijian fertility also fell sharply, to 3.2 in 2007. This paper uses a decomposition analysis technique to determine the components of changes in the TFRs due to marital structure and marital fertility among Fijians and Indians, covering the intercensal periods, 1966–1976, 1976–1986, 1986–1996 and 1996–2007.