Generations
Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking
John Protzko & Jonathan Schooler
Science Advances, October 2019
Abstract:
In five preregistered studies, we assess people’s tendency to believe “kids these days” are deficient relative to those of previous generations. Across three traits, American adults (N=3,458; Mage = 33-51 years) believe today’s youth are in decline; however, these perceptions are associated with people’s standing on those traits. Authoritarian people especially think youth are less respectful of their elders, intelligent people especially think youth are less intelligent, well-read people especially think youth enjoy reading less. These beliefs are not predicted by irrelevant traits. Two mechanisms contribute to humanity’s perennial tendency to denigrate kids: (1) a person-specific tendency to notice the limitations of others where one excels, (ii) a memory bias projecting one’s current qualities onto the youth of the past. When observing current children, we compare our biased memory to the present and a decline appears. This may explain why the kids these days effect has been happening for millennia.
What Should Children Learn? Americans’ Changing Socialization Values, 1986–2018
Kei Nomaguchi & Melissa Milkie
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, October 2019
Abstract:
Assessing changes in socialization values for children provides a unique window into how Americans perceive the landscape of their society. We examine whether, since the mid-1980s, Americans (1) emphasized survival values, like hard work, for children, as economic precarity rose or (2) prioritized self-expression values, like autonomy and compassion, as expected in postindustrial society. Analysis of 1986 to 2018 General Social Survey (N = 23,109) supports the precarity thesis: Preferences for hard work increased steadily whereas preferences for autonomy, the top-ranked quality throughout the period, declined. There was some indication of enduring self-expression values, as support for compassion increased and its relative importance to hard work stayed stable. Decomposition analyses show valuing hard work would have been even greater without demographic changes like an increase in college graduates. Aligning with earlier research, valuing obedience in children continued to decline. Our results extend theoretical work on complexities of socioeconomic links to parenting values.
Premarital parenthood and newlyweds’ marital trajectories
Justin Lavner et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
An increasing number of couples in the United States are entering their first marriage having already had a child together, raising important questions about whether and how these couples’ marriages differ from newlywed couples who enter marriage without children. The current study used 5 waves of data collected over the first 4.5 years of marriage from a sample of ethnically diverse, first-married newlywed couples living with low incomes to examine the effects of premarital parenthood on couples’ self-reported satisfaction, observed communication, and marital dissolution over time. Among couples who entered marriage with a shared biological child (premarital parents), satisfaction levels were lower and communication was less effective, less positive, and more negative than couples entering marriage without children. Rates of change in marital functioning did not differ between groups, but the rate of marital dissolution was twice as high among premarital parents (19.1%) relative to couples who were not parents at the start of marriage (9.5%). These between-groups differences remained robust after controlling for several demographic differences (race, age, education, household income, work status, relationship length, premarital cohabitation), and initial differences in communication did not account for between-groups differences in marital satisfaction or dissolution. Together, these findings indicate that newlywed marriage unfolds in similar ways for low-income couples with and without children at the start of marriage, but couples raising children at the time of marriage have greater vulnerability to marital distress and dissolution. Further research is needed to characterize this risk and how interventions can offset it.
Undue Burden Beyond Texas: An Analysis of Abortion Clinic Closures, Births, And Abortions in Wisconsin
Joanna Venator & Jason Fletcher
NBER Working Paper, October 2019
Abstract:
In this paper, we estimate the impacts of abortion clinic closures on access to clinics in terms of distance and congestion, abortion rates, and birth rates. Legislation regulating abortion providers enacted in Wisconsin in 2011-2013 ultimately led to the closure of two of five abortion clinics in Wisconsin, increasing the average distance to the nearest clinic to 55 miles and distance to some counties to over 100 miles. We use a difference-in-differences design to estimate the effect of change in distance to the nearest clinic on birth and abortion rates, using within-county variation across time in distance to identify the effect. We find that a hundred-mile increase in distance to the nearest clinic is associated with 25 percent fewer abortions and 4 percent more births. We see no significant effect of increased congestion at remaining clinics on abortion rates. We find significant racial disparities in who is most affected by abortion clinic closures, with increases in distance increasing birth rates significantly more for Black, Asian, and Hispanic women. Our results suggest that even small numbers of clinic closures can result in significant restrictions to abortion access of similar magnitude to those seen in Texas when a greater number of clinics closed their doors.
Gender linked fate explains lower legal abortion support among white married women
Leah Ruppanner et al.
PLoS ONE, October 2019
Abstract:
Abortion is uniquely connected to women’s experiences yet women’s attitudes towards legal abortion vary across the pro-choice/anti-abortion spectrum. Existing research has focused on sociodemographic characteristics to explain women’s levels of abortion support. Here, we argue that abortion attitudes vary with women’s perceptions of gender linked fate, or the extent to which some women see their fates as tied to other women. Drawing upon existing research showing that married white women report lower levels of gender linked fate than their non-married counterparts, we assess these relationships for abortion attitudes applying the 2012 American National Election Survey (n = 2,173). Using mediation analysis, we show that lower levels of gender linked fate among married white women (vs. non-married white women) explain their stronger opposition to abortion. As many state governments are increasingly legislating restricted access to legal abortion, understanding factors explaining opposition to legal abortion is urgently important.
The End of a Stereotype: Only Children Are Not More Narcissistic Than People With Siblings
Michael Dufner et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current research dealt with the stereotype that only children are more narcissistic than people with siblings. We first investigated the prevalence of this stereotype. In an online study (Study 1, N = 556), laypeople rated a typical only child and a typical person with siblings on narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry, the two subdimensions of the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire. They ascribed both higher admiration and higher rivalry to the only child. We then tested the accuracy of this stereotype by analyzing data from a large and representative panel study (Study 2, N = 1,810). The scores of only children on the two narcissism dimensions did not exceed those of people with siblings, and this result held when major potentially confounding covariates were controlled for. Taken together, the results indicate that the stereotype that only children are narcissistic is prevalent but inaccurate.
Interpersonal childhood adversity and stress generation in adolescence: Moderation by HPA axis multilocus genetic variation
Meghan Huang & Lisa Starr
Development and Psychopathology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research suggests that childhood adversity (CA) is associated with a wide range of repercussions, including an increased likelihood of interpersonal stress generation. This may be particularly true following interpersonal childhood adversity (ICA) and for youth with high hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis-related genetic risk. In the current study, we applied a multilocus genetic profile score (MGPS) approach to measuring HPA axis-related genetic variation and examined its interaction with ICA to predict interpersonal stress generation in a sample of adolescents aged 14–17 (N = 241, Caucasian subsample n = 192). MGPSs were computed using 10 single nucleotide polymorphisms from HPA axis-related genes (CRHR1, NRC31, NRC32, and FKBP5). ICA significantly predicted greater adolescent interpersonal dependent stress. Additionally, MGPS predicted a stronger association between ICA and interpersonal dependent (but not independent or noninterpersonal dependent) stress. No gene–environment interaction (G×E) effects were found for noninterpersonal CA and MGPS in predicting adolescent interpersonal dependent stress. Effects remained after controlling for current depressive symptoms and following stratification by race. Findings extend existing G×E research on stress generation to HPA axis-related genetic variation and demonstrate effects specific to the interpersonal domain.