Degrees of Change: An Assessment of the Deinstitutionalization of Marriage Thesis

Cherlin, Andrew J.

doi:10.1111/jomf.12605

Cited by 131 publications

(150 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…Complexity, diversity, and inequality now characterize the union‐formation process in the United States and other developed nations. The institution of marriage is facing new challenges, the result of the historical confluence of unusually rapid demographic, economic, and technological changes in the United States and around the world (Cherlin, in press; Esping‐Andersen & Billari, ). Population aging, racial and ethnic diversity, immigration, economic inequality, and challenges over gender ideologies—among other societal and global changes—have made the study of union formation an especially fertile and ever‐changing topic of study.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cohabitation and Marriage: Complexity and Diversity in Union‐Formation Patterns

Sassler

Lichter

2020

J of Marriage and Family

197

140

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Nonmarital cohabitation and marriage are now fundamentally linked, a fact that is routinely reflected in current research on union formation. Unprecedented changes in the timing, duration, and sequencing of intimate co‐residential relationships have made the study of traditional marriage far more complex today than in the past. It is now clear that a white, middle‐class, American‐centric research template has become increasingly anachronistic. In this review article, we begin by providing an overview of contemporary theory, empirical approaches, and demographic trends in cohabitation and marriage, focusing primarily on the United States, but also distinguishing the U.S. from patterns found in other high‐income societies, including European countries, Canada, Australia, and in East Asia. We place the spotlight on the causes and consequences of union transitions. We identify the commonalities between cohabitation and marriage, but also key differences that are expressed unevenly across different populations and cultural groups. The rise in nonmarital cohabitation has upended conventional theoretical models and measurement approaches to the study of traditional marriage, complicating matters but also reinvigorating family scholarship on union formation and its implications for partners, children, and society.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cohabitation and Marriage: Complexity and Diversity in Union‐Formation Patterns

Sassler

Lichter

2020

J of Marriage and Family

197

140

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“…Although families overall are increasingly diverse, research in this decade continued to focus on the distinctly different patterns in the United States between those with more resources and education and those with less (Cherlin, ; Guzzo & Hayford, ; Smock & Schwartz, ). People with college degrees and higher incomes are more likely to get married, be married when they have children, and stay married.…”

Section: Growing Economic Divides and Rising Risksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Families Across the Income Spectrum: A Decade in Review

Cooper

Pugh

2020

J of Marriage and Family

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During the past decade, scholars continued to focus on how larger economic trends impacted families across the income spectrum. From income and wealth inequality to economic insecurity, the gaps between the haves and the have nots remained, and some widened during this period. The authors' comprehensive review found the following three major takeaways: first, the biggest economic divides run through families with children; second, low‐income families face concentrated disadvantage marked by insecurity and precarity; and third, inequality and insecurity shaped the “dynamism” of family life, including how families respond culturally and emotionally to economic changes, and how these responses unfold over time. They examine active areas of research, including parenting trends and the transition to adulthood. They also document a new scholarly emphasis on uncertainty and instability along with the forces that exacerbate or mitigate them, such as job quality, economic volatility, wealth, and incarceration. Research during the past decade focused on the experience and consequences of dynamism, reflecting not only the reality that families evolve but also that they face continual change in their economic, social, and political contexts. The authors highlight research investigating how families “do dynamism,” work that looks over time or offers in‐depth examinations of how families adapt to and cope with dynamism every day. This research reveals that inequality and insecurity are not only matters of levels and gaps but also ongoing matters of meaning‐making, identity, and feeling. The authors conclude by highlighting some strengths and weaknesses of these research streams and pointing out new avenues for future scholarship.

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“…We compare responses from 2000-2006 (the years immediately prior to the Great Recession) to 2008-2016, similar to the period in which deaths among less-educated non-Hispanic whites due to overdose, suicide, and liver-related mortality grew so dramatically, as documented by Case and Deaton (2015). 3 Since these patterns hold for both women and men, we distinguish by race, but not by gender. In both time periods, whites were less likely than blacks or Hispanics to say that they were doing better than their parents.…”

Section: Racial and Ethnic Difference In Perceptions Of Social Standingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Tenuous Attachments of Working-Class Men

Edin

Nelson

Cherlin

et al. 2019

Journal of Economic Perspectives

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In this essay, we explore how working-class men describe their attachments to work, family, and religion. We draw upon in-depth, life history interviews conducted in four metropolitan areas with racially and ethnically diverse groups of working-class men with a high school diploma but no four-year college degree. Between 2000 and 2013, we deployed heterogeneous sampling techniques in the black and white working-class neighborhoods of Boston, Massachusetts; Charleston, South Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; and the Philadelphia/Camden area of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We screened to ensure that each respondent had at least one minor child, making sure to include a subset potentially subject to a child support order (because they were not married to, or living with, their child's mother). We interviewed roughly even numbers of black and white men in each site for a total of 107 respondents. Our approach allows us to explore complex questions in a rich and granular way that allows unanticipated results to emerge. These working-class men showed both a detachment from institutions and an engagement with more autonomous forms of work, childrearing, and spirituality, often with an emphasis on generativity, by which we mean a desire to guide and nurture the next generation. We also discuss the extent to which this autonomous and generative self is also a haphazard self, which may be aligned with counterproductive behaviors. And we look at racial and ethnic difference in perceptions of social standing.

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Degrees of Change: An Assessment of the Deinstitutionalization of Marriage Thesis

Cited by 131 publications

References 83 publications

Cohabitation and Marriage: Complexity and Diversity in Union‐Formation Patterns

Cohabitation and Marriage: Complexity and Diversity in Union‐Formation Patterns

Families Across the Income Spectrum: A Decade in Review

The Tenuous Attachments of Working-Class Men

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