Browsing by Subject "Divorce"
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Item Consequences of repartnering for post-divorce maternal well-being and risk behaviors(2014-08) Langlais, Michael Roger; Anderson, Edward RobertMothers' dating after divorce has been linked to health benefits for mothers (Amato, 2000). However, this association assumes that all repartnering relationships are beneficial for mothers (Symoens et al., 2014). According to the divorce-stress-adaptation perspective (Wang & Amato, 2000), mothers' dating after divorce may be a supportive factor for her adjustment if her relationship is high quality, which can assist mothers with post-divorce stress (Amato, 2000; Wang & Amato, 2000), or can contribute to post-divorce stress through low quality relationships (Hetherington, 2003; Montgomery et al., 1992). However, not all mothers date, and those that do, use different approaches to dating, such as dating only one partner versus multiple partners. Another deficit in the literature is the influence of selection processes during repartnering. As well as examining the impact of relationship quality on maternal well-being, the current study includes the influence of stable traits, such as age and length of marriage, in order to examine the threat of selection across different repartnering histories. The current study used four repartnering histories that mothers reported after divorce (no dating, dating monogamously, dating multiple partners serially, and dating multiple partners simultaneously) to examine consequences on maternal well-being (depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, drunkenness, and unprotected sex). Relationship quality is reported for each relationship. Using longitudinal monthly diary data collected over a two-year period beginning with filing for divorce and multi-level models, I examined changes in the intercept and slope of maternal well-being for each repartnering history, as well as the effect of breakup with a particular focus on the interaction of relationship quality. To test for the threat of selection, I used mothers' stable traits as level-2 predictors. Results for this study show that mothers who enter in a high quality relationship report slightly higher levels of maternal well-being. Mothers entering low quality relationships report slightly lower levels of maternal well-being compared to times when mothers are not dating. Maternal well-being was not consistently influenced by maternal breakup. Mothers also reported increases in unprotected sex throughout the study, which may be a better marker of trust than maternal well-being. Only support was found for selection effects. Implications for maternal well-being are discussed.Item Effects of parental divorce on children in relation to development and attachment style(2010-05) Cox, Sarah Elizabeth, 1982-; Rochlen, Aaron B.; Moore, Leslie A.Extensive research on the impact of divorce on children has been conducted. Much of this research emphasizes negative findings. Debate over the factors that exacerbate or alleviate these negative findings exists, and prompted investigation in this literature review. Two factors that may determine how children will react to parental divorce are the child's developmental acuity and attachment style at the time of the divorce event. This review explains developmental tasks from a psychosocial and cognitive perspective for developing children from birth to age 18. An understanding of these models can be used to examine how children may be vulnerable to the stresses in a divorcing family, as well as identifying how to help children of all ages become resilient. Research included in this review suggests that a secure attachment and consistent parenting are the best buffers from negative effects. This literature review is intended to be a guide to aid parents, counselors, and other professionals who seek the best outcome for children of divorce.Item The evolution of women's choices in the macroeconomy(2008-05) Rendall, Michelle Teresita, 1980-; Cooper, Russell W., 1955-; Guvenen, FatihVarious macroeconomic effects resulted from the changing economic and societal structure in the second half of the 20th century, which greatly impacted women's economic position in the United States. Using dynamic programming as the main modeling tool, and U.S. data for factual evidence, three papers are developed to test the validity of three related hypotheses focusing on female employment, education, marriage, and divorce trends. The first chapter estimates how much of the post-World War II evolution in employment and average wages by gender can be explained by a model where changing labor demand requirements are the driving force. I argue that a large fraction of the original female employment and wage gaps in mid-century, and the subsequent shrinking of both gaps, can be explained by labor reallocation from brawn-intensive to brain-intensive jobs favoring women's comparative advantage in brain over brawn. Thus, aggregate gender-specific employment and wage gap trends resulting from this labor reallocation are simulated in a general equilibrium model. The material in the second chapter is based on an ongoing joint project with Fatih Guvenen. We argue for a strong link between the rise in the proportion of educated women and the evolution of the divorce rate since mid-century. As women become increasingly educated their bargaining power within marriage rises and their economic situation in singlehood improves making marriage less attractive and divorce more attractive. Similarly, a change in the divorce regime (e.g., U.S. unilateral divorce laws in the 1970s), making marriages less stable, incentivizes women to seek education as insurance against the higher divorce risk. A framework that models the interdependence between education, marriage and divorce is developed, simulated, and contrasted against United States data evidence. The third chapter considers the implications of marital uncertainty on aggregate household savings behavior. To this end, an infinite horizon model withperpetual youth that features uncertainty over marriage quality is developed. Similarly to Cubeddu and Ríos-Rull (1997), I test how much of the savings rate decline from the 1960s to the 1980s can be explained by the changing United States demographic composition, specifically the rise in divorce rates and the fall in marriage rates.Item Examining the variations in and relations between nonresidential fathers’ financial contributions to and involvement with their children following divorce(2021-08-11) DeAnda, Jacqueline S.; Gershoff, Elizabeth T.; Gleason, Marci J; Russell, Stephen T; Anderson, Edward R; Osborne, Cynthia; Langlais, Michael RDivorce and subsequent changes in family structure can have far-reaching consequences for children. As a family’s total resources become split between two households, children are at increased risk for experiencing challenges related to reductions in financial support, as well as inconsistent emotional availability from their parents. In the final divorce decree, each parent has an (informal or formal) understanding of the financial support the nonresidential parent, who is most commonly the father, will provide to their former spouse to offset the costs of childrearing (i.e., child support), as well as the amount of time they will spend with their children (i.e., “parenting time”; visitation) on a regular basis. Unfortunately, research shows that some nonresidential fathers face challenges providing the financial and emotional support that help their children succeed long-term. Using monthly surveys from a sample of divorced mothers with primary residential custody, I first aim to describe the average trends in divorced nonresidential fathers’ child support and parenting time in the first two years following divorce-filing. My second aim is to investigate the longitudinal bidirectional associations between divorced nonresidential fathers’ child support compliance and parenting time to determine if changes in one form of fathers’ support are consistently associated with changes in the other. Results broadly indicated higher rates of child support compliance and parenting time than previously reported, as well overall stability over time. Findings also suggested that child support may be related to fathers’ abilities to pay support, while parenting time may be related to their abilities and willingness to stay involved. Finally, results largely demonstrated no reciprocal relationship between divorced nonresidential fathers’ child support and parenting time. The present study suggests that divorced nonresidential fathers’ increased contributions of child support may not lead to greater parenting time, nor will facilitating more parenting time necessarily lead fathers to contribute more financially in the long run. Child support and parenting time appear to be connected but distinguishable forms of support divorced nonresidential fathers provide to their children.Item The implications of resident mothers’ repartnering for children’s closeness and involvement with nonresident fathers(2011-12) Hurley, Kathleen Anne; Anderson, Edward Robert; Dix, Theodore H.; Hazen-Swann, Nancy L.With around 50 percent of all dissolving marriages consisting of families with children, and around half of residential parents reporting some experience with dating new partners within 60 days of filing for divorce, there is a need to understand the influences on children’s relationships and the possible consequences or benefits that may be imposed on children due to not only divorce, but additional parental transitions such as repartnering. In this study, I used data from the Texas Families Project, a longitudinal, multi-informant, multi-method study, to examine the implications of mothers’ repartnering for children’s closeness and involvement with nonresident fathers. Resident mother’s dating status alone does not seem to impact children’s closeness and involvement with their nonresident fathers as much as the new relationship that children are forming with their mothers’ partners impacts these relationships. Mothers’ and children’s reports differ, providing competing results as to whether or not children’s relationships with their mothers’ partners is associated with changes in children’s relationships with their fathers. Children report a positive relationship between involvement with their mothers’ romantic partners and involvement with their nonresident fathers, suggesting that both children’s biological fathers and their alternative caretaker play a valuable role in their lives. Mothers’ reports show that there is a negative relationship between the amount of time spent with their mothers’ romantic partner and positive involvement with children’s nonresident father, suggesting that children could be substituting time with their fathers for time with their mothers’ romantic partner. Although contact may decrease due to the child and mothers’ romantic partner relationship, child’s closeness to their father is not affected, supporting research that states that children may continue to feel close to their fathers even when contact is low.Item The meaning and use of the word vidua in Latin literature of the 2nd and 1st century B.C.(2013-08) Koutseridi, Olga; Riggsby, Andrew M.The primary role of this report is to provide an in-depth analysis of all the instances of the word vidua, its meanings and uses in Latin literature from the last two centuries B.C. This close examination of the word vidua in the literary sources of this period has resulted in a number of important modifications to its definition. The word vidua, which is commonly translated by ancient scholars as widow, is not sustained by the contextual evidence of the majority of the passages that do no state explicitly the reason for the women's deprived status. Instead the word is most commonly used to mean a much broader social group of Roman women, all no longer married women, a category which includes various groups of women such as widows, divorcees, abandoned women and women whose husbands have been away for long periods of time. Furthermore the English word unmarried should not be used to translate the Latin word vidua since, as I demonstrate throughout my paper, there is a clear distinction in the Roman minds between women who are no longer married, vidua, and women who are not yet married, virgines an important distinction that gets lost with the more inclusive and broader social category meant by the word unmarried.Item Personal history or personality? differences in relationship quality between remarriages and first marriages(2010-12) Schoenfeld, Elizabeth Austin; Huston, Ted L.; Loving, Timothy J.; Anderson, Edward R.The current study is the first to explore how reported reasons for divorce are associated with the emotional climate of subsequent marriages, and if the emotional climate of these relationships is significantly different from that of happy or unhappy first marriages. It also examines whether variations in the emotional climate of marriage are reducible to underlying personality characteristics. These issues were investigated using data from the Texas Baseline Survey on Marriage. Results indicate that there are two types of marriage that end in divorce: those preceded by a highly distressed marriage, and those preceded by a less distressed marriage. Regardless of emotional tenor of the marriage prior to divorce, the emotional climate of remarriages appears to be largely similar to that of happy first marriages and substantially better than that of unhappy first marriages. Although individuals with different relationship histories possess distinct personality profiles, the differences in emotional climate persist after the effects of personality have been taken into account. Overall, these results suggest that accounting for differences among those who have divorced, as well as distinguishing between happy and unhappy first marriages, is important for understanding the affective nature of marriage.Item Religious dissimilarity and the risk of divorce : evidence from two waves of the national survey of families and households(2004-12-18) Vaaler, Margaret Lommen; Ellison, Christopher G., 1960-The present study uses Cox proportional hazards modeling to examine the speed and likelihood of marital dissolution accounting for several dynamics of religiosity of married couples. It is a longitudinal study using two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. Theological beliefs and the belief dissimilarity of spouses have little effect on the likelihood of dissolution over time. The main effect of a wives’ religious attendance decreases the statistical likelihood of divorce. Conversely, unions with husbands who attend more than there wives are at an elevated risk of dissolution over time. Denominational homo/heterogamy has little effect on the likelihood of divorce. However, mixed-faith couples in which wives identify as exclusivist Protestant are at an elevated risk. Results from all models show that mixed-race couples and cohabiters are at risk of divorce over time. Several implications and promising directions for future research are discussedItem The Secrets I am Ashamed of(2019) McCullough, KathrynItem Shatranj Ki Baazi: Muslim Women'S Activism, The Patriarchy, And Triple Talaq In Modi'S India(2019-05-01) D'Aguilar, Danielle Ayana; Azam, HinaIn August, 2017, the Indian Supreme Court ruled on a landmark case involving one Shayara Bano and four petitioners that instant triple talaq, a unique and controversial variation of an Islamic method for declaring divorce, was incompatible with the Indian constitution due to its detrimental effects on Muslim women and its lack of centrality to the religion. Many news and media sources both in India and around the world were quick to report this as a straightforward victory for Muslim women, while the male-dominated Islamic scholarly community expressed disdain at the least and outrage at the most. However, the matter is far more complicated and requires an understanding of history, social structure and political ideologies in India. The first portion of this paper analyzes the history of State intervention in Muslim personal law from the colonial period onward in an effort to contextualize and critique the current government’s actions. It then analyzes and compares the tactics and positions of four Muslim women’s activist groups and the one male-dominated group at the forefront of public discourse on instant triple talaq, as well as their responses to the Supreme Court judgement and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s subsequent executive order to criminalize the practice. Ultimately, the paper aims to answer the following question: What do these groups approaches to activism and stances on instant triple talaq convey about the current state of gender politics in Islamic institutions in India? In the process of providing an answer, the paper also addresses issues such as the relationship between the State and religious minorities, the competing loyalties that face Muslim women, and the inevitable consequences of inviting a Hindu nationalist regime to intervene in a prolonged conflict between Muslim women and the patriarchal forces behind the Islamic institutions.Item The social and relational meaning of child support(2014-05) Cozzolino, Elizabeth Anne; Williams, Christine L., 1959-In this Thesis, I investigate the social meaning of child support payments for members of separated families. Drawing on 21 interviews with members of separated families, I explore how payments from one parent to another shape family relationships. I focus on three main topics: how child support payments are different from other forms of money in the ways that they are discussed, earmarked and spent; what child support payments reveal about cultural expectations of motherhood and fatherhood; and how respondents regard the fairness and efficacy of state child support policy. I argue that child support payments reinforce class and gender inequality. Child support reifies mothers’ disproportionate responsibility for children and uneven child support enforcement further subjects the poor to the coercive power of the state.Item The growth of education differentials in marital dissolution in the United States(2021-11-29) McErlean, Kimberly; Raley, R. KellyRecent data suggest that overall divorce rates in the United States have been declining since the 1980s, while research examining marriages formed prior to 2004 suggests that divorce rates historically have not declined equally across the socioeconomic spectrum. This study examines marital dissolution and divorce rates in the new millennium to understand trends by marital cohort and educational attainment. I use the 2006-2019 National Survey of Family Growth female data-set to assess the likelihood of marital dissolution and divorce by fifth and tenth anniversary, using life tables and discrete-time event history analysis. Results show that overall marital dissolution and divorce rates are declining over time. However, this downward trend is driven by those with higher education; those with the least education are seeing rising marital dissolution rates, even when controlling for correlated risk factors. The greater divide when examining marital dissolution as compared to formal divorce also illustrates the lower propensity of the least educated to formalize their dissolution. Overall, these findings highlight that overall dissolution trends hide important – and growing – differentials by educational attainment. Declines in dissolution are not equally distributed across social classes; those women who are most vulnerable to divorce are least likely to be able to recover from its negative consequencesItem Three essays concerning religion and domestic behavior(2009-08) Gregoire, Scott Larkin; Hamermesh, Daniel S.; Stinchcombe, MaxwellIn the first essay, I demonstrate that during the 1970s, the marital behavior of US Catholics changed dramatically relative to that of the total population. The Catholic marriage rate, that is, the number of Catholic marriages per 1000 Catholics, decreased nearly 20 percent relative to the civil marriage rate. Before and after this time period, the two rates moved in unison. Empirically, I find that the Catholic reforms and encyclicals of the 1960s, that is, Vatican II and Humanae Vitae, led to a decrease in the Catholic marriage rate relative to the civil marriage rate and that the reform of civil divorce law had no effect on this relative rate. In the second essay, I expand the analysis of the previous essay and test whether a negative response among US Catholics to the reforms of Vatican II and to Humanae Vitae is able to explain the increase in the civil marriage rate, the decrease in the Catholic marriage rate, and the increase in the interfaith marriage rate seen in the data. To do this, I construct an original model that treats marriage as a set of two contracts, one civil and one religious, with the benefit and cost of the religious contract depending upon a social complementarity. The theory and the data match if the primary effect of 1960s Catholic reform was to decrease the benefit of a Catholic marriage. In the third essay, I examine the link between religiosity and the incidence of domestic abuse and model sanctification as the pathway connecting the two. Sanctification is "a psychological process through which aspects of life are perceived by people as having spiritual character or significance"[25]. In the model, the abuser must his choose level of abuse, and both abuser and abused must allocate a scarce amount of time between the production of a marital good and a personal consumption good. Sanctification is modeled as an increase in the return to time invested in the marital good. Theoretically, abuse increases in both spouses' level of sanctification and the wife's productivity and decreases in the husband's productivity. This partially agrees with the data.