Religion & Marriage Among African Americans in Urban America
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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
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:
Family structure
Family culture
Family process
Family economics
After reviewing the available data, 3 key global
family indicators were selected for the
prototype report:
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
Surveys with same items and data collection
procedures across countries
Or, data are harmonized across countries
How we selected countries:
Regional representation
Developing and developed countries
Data available for desired time period
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
Countries (16)
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
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”
Countries (20)
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
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
Measure: Percentage of youth (ages 9-18)
reporting violence at home
Countries
Conducted in over 70 countries
Only in the regions of East Asia and the Pacific,
Europe, and Latin America
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
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
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
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?
Countries and years included in the analysis
Egypt – 2000
India – 2005-06
Kenya – 2003
Nigeria – 2003
Peru – 2000
Colombia – 2005
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
Hypothesis 2: Mother knows best
Youth living with one biological parent will attend
school at higher rates than those living with two
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.
The WFMP will assemble an International
Board of Advisors
The WFMP will launch its inaugural World
Family Map © in late 2010 or early 2011.
The project will release periodic indicator
reports as well as about 2 analytical briefs
each year
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