Tied down
Brian Taylor, Kelcie Ralph & Michael Smart
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objectives: Many gender differences in travel have begun to converge. Has convergence occurred for household-serving travel, which constitutes a very large and growing share of all trips? Moreover, what explains the division of household-serving travel in heterosexual couples? In answering these questions, we test the salience of three theories about the gendered division of household labor: (1) time availability, (2) microeconomic, and (3) gender socialization.
Methods: Using data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from 2003 to 2012, we calculated the female-to-male ratio of household-serving trips in several types of households (i.e., singles vs. couples and male vs. female breadwinner households).
Results: There was some empirical support for each theory, but we find the most consistent and compelling evidence for gender socialization. We observe substantial gender differences in child- and household-serving trips apart from household formation; even in households where women earn more, are better educated, or work more hours than their partners, women still make about half again as many child-serving and grocery-shopping trips as their male partners.
Conclusion: Despite dramatic changes in women's labor force participation over the past half-century, the gender division of household-serving travel remains strong.
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Some Men Earn More, Some Men Earn Less; Which Men Earn More When They Marry?
Jonathan Bearak
NYU Working Paper, August 2015
Abstract:
This article investigates the effect of marriage on male earnings through an analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979-2010). Unlike prior research, this article does not assume that marriage affects men who earn a lot the same way that it affects men who earn little. The analysis shows that low-earning men marry around a time in their lives when they do particularly well: their earnings rise before they marry, peak around the fourth year, and then decline. In contrast, among high-earning men, earnings grow after and not before they marry. Recent scholarship questions the direction of causation between marriage and earnings because the average man’s earnings begin to rise shortly before marriage. However, the evidence that selection into marriage rather than effects of marriage explain men’s marriage premium pertains not to all but a subset of men – those at the bottom of the earnings distribution – a group of men also less likely to marry and remain married. For men higher in the distribution, marriage elevates earnings. Thus, ironically, marriage may have a causal effect on male earnings – just not on the earnings of the poor men on whom social scientists and policymakers focus most of their concern about the retreat from marriage. Marriage reinforces preexisting male earnings inequality, by increasing the distance between men at the bottom and top of the distribution. Thus, decreasing socioeconomic disparities in marriage rates will not decrease male earnings inequality — unless by a process which discourages high-earning men from marrying.
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The Gender of Breakup in Heterosexual Couples
Michael Rosenfeld
Stanford Working Paper, August 2015
Abstract:
Women initiate most divorces in the US, yet the reasons why women are more likely to initiate divorce are poorly understood. All of the prior literature on the gendered nature of breakup has been limited to analysis of heterosexual marriages and divorces. Prior literature has therefore been unable to distinguish the gendered nature of relationship breakup, versus the gendered roles of breakup specific to the institution of marriage itself. In this paper, I use a new longitudinal study of relationships and breakups in the US, the How Couples Meet and Stay Together surveys. The data examine the gender of breakup for both marital and nonmarital relationships for the first time. The results show that women’s initiation of breakup is specific to heterosexual marriage. Men and women in nonmarital heterosexual relationships in the US are equally likely to initiate breakup. The results are consistent with a feminist critique of heterosexual marriage as an institution that benefits men more than women.
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Grandmothering life histories and human pair bonding
James Coxworth et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
"We call attention to evidence that connects the evolution of human pair bonds to the male-biased sex ratios in fertile ages that characterize human populations. As in mammals generally, age-specific mortality is higher in males than in females. However, this difference is overshadowed by a distinctive feature of human life history: Oldest ages at parturition are about the same in humans as in other living hominids, the great apes, whereas longevity is substantially greater and male fertility continues to older ages. Exceptional longevity with a distinctive postmenopausal life stage may have evolved in our lineage when grandmothers’ subsidies for weaned dependents allowed mothers to have next babies sooner. According to this grandmother hypothesis, longevity increased as longer-lived grandmothers could help more and so left more longer-lived descendants of both sexes. Women’s postfertile life stage produces a bias in the sex ratio of fertile adults with repercussions for male strategies. As longevity increased, older-aged males expanded the pool of competitors for the still-fertile females. With more competitors for each paternity, males’ average success in finding new mates inevitably declined until defending a current mate became the better option. Our distinctive life history thus supplies previously unrecognized support for a mate-guarding hypothesis for the evolution of human pair bonds."
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Facebook or Memory — Which Is the Real Threat to Your Relationship?
Michelle Drouin, Daniel Miller & Jayson Dibble
Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examined the role of Facebook friends lists in identifying potential sexual and committed relationship alternatives and the effects this had on relationship investment in a sample of 371 young adult undergraduates. A Facebook versus memory experimental protocol was developed to test whether Facebook friends lists act as primers for recognition of potential sexual and committed relationship partners and whether identifying these potential partners (either from Facebook or from memory) caused lower relationship investment. Facebook friends lists did act as memory primers for potential partners, but only for sexual partners, and the effect was stronger for men than it was for women. However, identifying potential partners through Facebook actually lowered a person's perceptions of the quality of their alternatives. In contrast, merely thinking about potential alternatives from one's social sphere lowered relationship satisfaction and commitment with one's current committed partner. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to current work on the negative effects of Facebook use on relationship outcomes.
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Battle of the Sexes: How Sex Ratios Affect Female Bargaining Power
Erwin Bulte, Qin Tu & John List
Economic Development and Cultural Change, forthcoming
Abstract:
A vibrant literature has emerged that explores the economic implications of the sex ratio (the ratio of men to women in the population), including changes in fertility rates, educational outcomes, labor supply, and household purchases. Previous empirical efforts, however, have paid less attention to the underlying channel via which changes in the sex ratio affect economic decisions. This study combines evidence from a field experiment and a survey to document that the sex ratio importantly influences female bargaining power: as the sex ratio increases, female bargaining power increases.
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(Mis)matching in physical attractiveness and women's resistance to mate guarding
Madeleine Fugère, Alita Cousins & Stephanie MacLaren
Personality and Individual Differences, December 2015, Pages 190–195
Abstract:
Women (N = 692) in romantic relationships (average duration approximately two years) responded to an online survey. The women self-reported their own as well as their partners' physical attractiveness, revealing significant perceived matching in physical attractiveness, as well as a tendency to rate their partners as more attractive than themselves. The women completed the Resistance to Mate Guarding Scale as well as other measures of relationship attitudes and behaviors. Women who perceived themselves as more attractive than their mates more strongly resisted mate guarding; the strongest relationships were with the subscales of Covert Resistance Behaviors, Resisting Public Displays of Affection, and Avoiding Partner Contact. When women perceived themselves as more attractive than their mates, they also reported less commitment, more flirting with other men, more appealing dating alternatives, and more frequent thoughts about breaking up.
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The co-movement of couples’ incomes
Stephen Shore
Review of Economics of the Household, September 2015, Pages 569-588
Abstract:
While there is a large literature on how individual incomes move over time, we know much less about couples’ joint income dynamics. Current research on individual income dynamics has increasingly considered heterogeneity — do all individuals’ incomes evolve in the same way, or does a particular individual’s income evolve in the same way throughout their life? This paper considers the analogous questions for couples — do all couples’ incomes move together in the same way, or does a particular couple’s incomes move together in the same way throughout their marriage? In particular, I find evidence of correlated volatility; husbands with volatile incomes tend to have wives with volatile ones. I find weaker evidence for heterogeneity in the correlation of husbands’ and wives’ income changes, with some couples incomes moving together while others moving in opposite directions. Couples’ income changes are negatively correlated early in marriage, particularly when young children are present, and become more positively correlated over time.
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Man-Kit Lei et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examined whether romantic relationship satisfaction would serve as a link between early and later stressors which in turn would influence the thyroid function index (TFI), an indicator of physiological stress response. Using the framework of genetic susceptibility theory combined with hypotheses derived from the vulnerability-stress-adaptation and stress-generation models, we tested whether the hypothesized mediational model would be conditioned by 5-HTTLPR genotype, with greater effects and stronger evidence of mediation among carriers of the “s” allele. In a sample of African American women in romantic relationships (n = 270), we found that 5-HTTLPR moderated each stage of the hypothesized mediational model in a “for better or for worse” manner. That is genetic polymorphisms function to exacerbate not only the detrimental impact of negative environments (i.e., “for worse effects”) but also the beneficial impact of positive environments (i.e., “for better effects”). The effect of early stress on relationship satisfaction was greater among carriers of the “short” allele than among those who did not carry the short allele, and was significantly different in both the “for better” and “for worse” direction. Likewise, the effect of relationship satisfaction on later stressors was moderated in a “for better “or “for worse” manner. Finally, impact on physiological stress, indexed using TFI level, indicated that the impact of later stressors on TFI level was greater in the presence of the short allele, and also followed a “for better” or “for worse” pattern. As expected, the proposed mediational model provided a better fit for “s” allele carriers.
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Putting laughter in context: Shared laughter as behavioral indicator of relationship well-being
Laura Kurtz & Sara Algoe
Personal Relationships, forthcoming
Abstract:
Laughter is a pervasive human behavior that most frequently happens in a social context. However, data linking the behavior of laughter with psychological or social outcomes are exceptionally rare. Here, the authors draw attention to shared laughter as a useful objective marker of relationship well-being. Spontaneously generated laughs of 71 heterosexual romantic couples were coded from a videorecorded conversation about how the couple first met. Multilevel models revealed that while controlling for all other laughter present, the proportion of the conversation spent laughing simultaneously with the romantic partner was uniquely positively associated with global evaluations of relationship quality, closeness, and social support. Results are discussed with respect to methodological considerations and theoretical implications for relationships and behavioral research more broadly.