Transcript Religion & Marriage Among African Americans in Urban America

Kristin Anderson Moore, Laura Lippman, Camille Whitney
Child Trends
Brad Wilcox
University of Virginia
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The WFMP has three primary intellectual
goals:
 Monitoring the health of marriage & family
around the globe
 Analyzing the social, cultural, and economic
forces affecting marriage & family across the
world
 Explaining how strong families foster child
well-being around the globe
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What are the unique strengths & challenges
facing families, not just in the Western world,
but also in the non-Western world?
 The extended family in Africa, Asia, & the Middle
East
 HIV-AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa
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How can we help indigenous groups &
organizations build on these
strengths & face these
challenges?
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The World Family Map Prototype serves 3
important purposes:
 Provides a model of the kinds of data monitoring
& analysis the WFMP is capable of
 Provides an overview of 3 key global family trends
 Affords a sense of the project’s potential
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The World Family Map Project will report on
four types of family indicators:
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Family structure
Family culture
Family process
Family economics
After reviewing the available data, 3 key global
family indicators were selected for the
prototype report:
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Family structure – Children living with two
biological parents
Family culture – Attitudes toward marriage
Family process – Domestic Violence
How data sources were selected:
Representing regions of the world
Several indicators in the data set
Rigorous and repeated measures over time
Comparable across countries
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Surveys with same items and data collection
procedures across countries
Or, data are harmonized across countries
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How we selected countries:
 Regional representation
 Developing and developed countries
 Data available for desired time period
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Motivation:
 A large body of social scientific evidence indicates
children in the U.S. do best with both biological
parents.
 The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child holds a child shall have “as far as possible,
the right to know and be cared for by his or her
parents.”
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Measure: The percentage of children living with two
probable biological parents
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Countries (16)
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Asia: China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia
Europe: Great Britain, Spain, Sweden
Latin America: Colombia, Mexico, Peru
Middle East: Egypt
North America: Canada, United States
Oceania: Australia
Sub-Saharan Africa: Nigeria, South Africa
Data sources: Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS),
Census data (IPUMS), plus country sources: circa year 2000
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Possible explanations for why higher proportions of
children live with both biological parents in Asia and
the Middle East than in other regions:
 Asian and Middle Eastern countries retain more traditional
family structure and are more family oriented
 Sub-Saharan Africa: HIV-AIDS has orphaned many
children; fathers migrate to work and kinship system has
strong maternal focus
 N. America/Europe/Oceania are more individualistic
 Latin America has history of informal unions and
increasing single parenthood
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Motivation:
 Much of the developed world is in the midst of an
international retreat from marriage marked by
increases in cohabitation, divorce, illegitimacy,
and lifelong singleness
 Are these demographic shifts paralleled by
declines in public support for marriage?
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Measure: Percentage of adults who disagree that “marriage
is an outdated institution”
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Countries (20)
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Asia: China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore
Europe: Great Britain, Spain, Sweden
Latin America: Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Peru
Middle East: Egypt, Saudi Arabia
North America: Canada, United States
Oceania: Australia, New Zealand
Sub-Saharan Africa: Nigeria, South Africa
Source: World Values Survey, circa year 2000
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Findings in context of other patterns and research
 Countries with more economic development and
individualistic ethos tend to have lower rates of marriage
 Religion is one likely source of variation in rates of support
for marriage
▪ Egypt, Indonesia, and the U.S. have higher rates of support and
more religious populations
 History of high cohabitation rates in parts of Latin America
and maternal focus of families in Sub-Saharan Africa
High rates of exposure to domestic
violence reported by youth
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Motivation:
 Witnessing or experiencing physical violence in
the home is associated with a range of social and
psychological problems among children
 The international community is largely united in
its moral opposition to domestic violence
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Measure: Percentage of youth (ages 9-18)
reporting violence at home
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Countries
 Conducted in over 70 countries
 Only in the regions of East Asia and the Pacific,
Europe, and Latin America
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Data Source: UNICEF children’s opinion polls,
1999-2001
High rates of exposure to domestic
violence reported by youth
High rates of exposure to domestic
violence reported by youth
Findings in context of other research
 Economic: poverty is associated with domestic violence,
which could help explain higher rates in less developed
countries
 Cultural: Higher rates in Latin America may be related to
culture of “machismo”, and in East Asia and the Pacific to
cultural traditions of patriarchal authority
 Legal: laws banning corporal punishment appear to have
reduced rates of corporal punishment in Europe, and may
also have reduced the prevalence of domestic violence
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Motivation for choosing this analysis
 The WFMP Advisors chose to focus on education
for this first analysis
 Education is one of the most important outcomes
for children
 It is one of the United Nations Millennium Goals to
achieve universal primary education
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Measures for analysis
 Outcome: Whether secondary school-age youth
(11-14) are enrolled in school
 Predictor: Number of the youth’s biological
parents in the household
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Data Source
 Demographic and Health Surveys
▪ Data from most recent year for each country
Does the # of biological parents at
home relate to school attendance?
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Countries and years included in the analysis
 Egypt – 2000
 India – 2005-06
 Kenya – 2003
 Nigeria – 2003
 Peru – 2000
 Colombia – 2005
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Hypothesis 1: Two biological parents are
better than one
 Youth living with two biological parents will
attend school at higher rates than those living
with one
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Hypothesis 2: Mother knows best
 Youth living with one biological parent will attend
school at higher rates than those living with two
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Hypothesis 3: Parents don’t matter
Discussion of the findings
 Why is living with a single biological parent a disadvantage
ONLY in Colombia, after controls?
▪ Family structure may be less related to school attendance than
other factors in developing countries
▪ Single parents in Africa and Asia may tend to control resources and
devote them to children
▪ Single parents may be getting help from extended family,
especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia
▪ Biological fathers may be less involved in their children’s education
in some countries, compared to intact families in North America
 Living with no biological parent is a disadvantage
compared to with living with 2 bio parents across the
globe. As this % increases, we must monitor its effects.
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The WFMP will assemble an International
Board of Advisors
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The WFMP will launch its inaugural World
Family Map © in late 2010 or early 2011.
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The project will release periodic indicator
reports as well as about 2 analytical briefs
each year
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