Dynamics of population: Social and biological significance of changing birth rates in the United States.

Lorimer, Frank; Osborn, Frederick

doi:10.1037/13325-000

Cited by 15 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Much of this research, however, has been limited to cohorts born after 1945 (see Beets & van Hoorn, 1988;Dorbritz & Schwarz, 1996;Houseknecht, 1987;Kiernan, 1989;McAllister & Clarke, 1998;Niphuis-Nell, 1979), and there is some debate among scholars as to the meaning and existence of voluntary childlessness among earlier cohorts. For example, demographers in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s estimated that between 25% and 40% of childless married couples had remained childless by choice (Lorimer & Osborn, 1934; see review in Poston & Kramer, 1983), though more recent scholars have described this behavior mainly as deliberate fertility delays that for most resulted in inadvertent rather than voluntary childlessness (Rindfuss et al, 1988). The major roles of delayed and nonmarriage, fertility delays, and age-related fecundity (see Hastings & Robinson, 1974;Morgan, 1991), as well as limited birth control options and strong cultural prohibitions against childbearing outside of marriage, advise against applying contemporary notions of voluntary childlessness to earlier cohorts.…”

Section: Correlates Of Childlessness: a View From Fertility Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characteristics of Older Childless Persons and Parents

Koropeckyj‐Cox

Call

2007

Journal of Family Issues

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The prevalence and implications of childlessness in old age are compared across nine major surveys in seven countries: Australia, Finland, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Specifically, the researchers examine indicators of the well-being and resources of childless men and women, compare them to their within-country peers with children, and explore the similarities and differences among childless older adults in different countries. The results show strikingly similar patterns across countries (with the exception of Japan). Childless elders are more likely than parents to live alone or in an institution. Childless never-married women have consistently higher education levels than other groups of women. Among men, marriage rather than parenthood is consistently linked with higher socioeconomic status. The results suggest important structural processes that differentially shape the resources and well-being of men and women, childless and parents, over the life course and in old age.

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Section: Correlates Of Childlessness: a View From Fertility Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characteristics of Older Childless Persons and Parents

Koropeckyj‐Cox

Call

2007

Journal of Family Issues

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“…16 These changes in terminology were directed towards members of the 'new science' of population. 17 It was a field to which Osborn had already contributed in collaboration with the eugenicist and demographer Frank Lorimer (Lorimer & Osborn, 1934), and it was here that the future of eugenics resided. Osborn encouraged eugenicists to acquiesce to demographic priorities, that is, with the problem of global population growth.…”

Section: Disclosing Transferring and Concealing The Marks Of Eugenicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting the Stigma of Eugenics

Ramsden

2009

Soc Stud Sci

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Building upon the work of Thomas Gieryn and Erving Goffman, this paper will explore how the concepts of stigma and boundary work can be usefully applied to history of population science. Having been closely aligned to eugenics in the early 20th century, from the 1930s both demographers and geneticists began to establish a boundary between their own disciplines and eugenic ideology. The eugenics movement responded to this process of stigmatization. Through strategies defined by Goffman as 'disclosure' and 'concealment', stigma was managed, and a limited space for eugenics was retained in science and policy. Yet by the 1960s, a revitalized eugenics movement was bringing leading social and biological scientists together through the study of the genetic demography of characteristics such as intelligence. The success of this programme of 'stigma transformation' resulted from its ability to allow geneticists and demographers to conceive of eugenic improvement in ways that seemed consistent with the ideals of individuality, diversity and liberty. In doing so, it provided them with an alternative, and a challenge, to more radical and controversial programmes to realize an optimal genotype and population. The processes of stigma attribution and management are, however, ongoing, and since the rise of the nature-nurture controversy in the 1970s, the use of eugenics as a 'stigma symbol' has prevailed.

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“…Through allowing individuals to realize their desired fertility, the aims of eugenics became consistent with general social interests. This approach was built upon the work of Frank Lorimer and Frederick Osborn in the United States, described by Blacker as "pioneers of the new approach to eugenics through demography" (Blacker, 1952, p. 184;Lorimer & Osborn, 1934;Osborn, 1940). 5 A wealthy and well-connected leader of the American Eugenics Society (AES), A DIFFERENTIAL PARADOX 113 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI: 10.1002/jhbs 4.…”

Section: Reforming Eugenics and The Founding Of The Population Investmentioning

confidence: 99%

A differential paradox: The controversy surrounding the Scottish mental surveys of intelligence and family size

Ramsden

2007

J History Behavioral Science

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In 1947, the Scottish Council for Research in Education and the Population Investigation Committee conducted a survey of Scottish schoolchildren, exploring the relations between tested intelligence and fertility. The survey was not only significant for its size, measuring the IQ of all 11-year-olds at school on the day of testing, some 80,805 children, but also because it was a repeat survey. Its purpose was to establish whether the intelligence of the population had declined because of the negative correlation between IQ and family size. The paper will explore how the impetus for the 1947 survey came from attempts to revive the fortunes of the eugenics movement, based upon the interdisciplinary study of population. While most expected the study to provide evidence of a decline in intelligence, it revealed an increase. This was in spite of a continuing process of differential fertility. This paper will explore the influence of these results, described as a "paradox," upon the future development of the eugenics movement and the sciences of population. While for many, the results were seen to have completely, and thankfully, undermined eugenic fears of degeneration, the supposed "resolution" of the paradox in 1962 provided the basis of a meritocratic and optimistic "new eugenics" that sought to reunite social and biological scientists concerned with human betterment in Britain and the United States.

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Dynamics of population: Social and biological significance of changing birth rates in the United States.

Cited by 15 publications

References 0 publications

Characteristics of Older Childless Persons and Parents

Characteristics of Older Childless Persons and Parents

Confronting the Stigma of Eugenics

A differential paradox: The controversy surrounding the Scottish mental surveys of intelligence and family size

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