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Although media coverage of infertility treatments has increased markedly over the past decade, there is a dearth of empirical information about public perceptions of the ethics of infertility procedures (e.g. artificial insemination, in-vitro fertilization, donor eggs, surrogate mothering, gestational carriers) and about the factors that shape them. Two representative telephone survey samples (930 adults in a Midwestern state, and 580 adult women aged 25 to 50 in the North Central region) are analyzed to gauge public views on the ethics of infertility treatments and estimate the effects of social structure and exposure on these views. Ethical concerns were viewed as more serious for techniques that could result in a child who may not be biologically related to the woman or her partner than for those yielding a child biologically related to both parents. Social structural factors such as age and education were the strongest predictors of attitudes towards the ethics of infertility treatments. Neither parenthood nor experiencing infertility was related to ethical concerns, although women reporting the use of infertility services had fewer ethical concerns than their counterparts.

Theory based on sex role traditionalism predicts a more punishing decision for female than for male offenders, while theory based on chivalry (paternalism) predicts greater leniency by the courts for female offenders. This paper tests these two models using a large sample (36,680) ofjuvenile court referrals in metropolitan, urban, and rural locations spanning a nine-year period. Nonparametric analysis of covariance is used to control for differences in offense, previous contact with the court system, and other background variables. Evidence of gender bias in dispositions was found. The patterns of bias across time, location, offense committed, and previous referral to the court system supports the persistence of chivalry and a decline in sex role traditionalism in court decisions. Greater punishment for girls than boys was found only for repeat offenders committing more serious offenses. Even in those cases, girls were more likely to be taken out of the home environment by the courts through a custody transfer while boys were more likely to be sent to a lock-up facility. *We would like to thank the Nebraska Commission for Law Enforcement andCriminal Justice for permission to use the data on juvenile referrals. We also would like to thank N. Steven King for his help with the project and Wayne Osgood for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 29 NUMBER 4 1991 677 JOHNSON AND SCHEUBLEnine-year period. The availability of longitudinal data for one state allows the evaluation of inconsistencies in previous findings, which possibly are due to geographic location or to the time period of the disposition. TWO MODELS OF SEX EFFECTSTraditional Western values and sex role expectations would predict that male and female juveniles would receive differential treatment by the court system. Within American society, certain behaviors are sex typed-"behaviors which typically elicit different rewards from one sex than the other" (Mischel, 196656). Thus, the same lawbreaking behavior could result in different dispositions by sex because some behaviors are deemed to be more acceptable for males and some behaviors are more acceptable for females. For example, Simon (1975), Feinman (1979), and Edwards (1989, refer to the traditional sex role model as a reaction by society to treat female offenders more punitively. This is because law-violating behavior by girls is seen as inappropriate and in conflict with the traditional definition of the feminine role as being dependent, gentle, and compliant. For males, getting in trouble with the law is viewed as one consequence of independence, aggressiveness, and self-reliance, which are strong components of the traditional male role. This model would expect that the more a girl's law-abiding behavior departs from the traditional female role expectations, the more punitive the court's reaction. As a result, girls committing status offenses would be treated more severely than boys committing the same offenses, and female repeat offenders would also be treated more sever...

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