The Retreat from Marriage and Parenthood
Examining the Causes and Consequences of Declining Rates
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- Description
- Contents
- About
Around the globe, two of the more fundamental attributes of families and households have been changing, as both rates of marriage and fertility have been steadily decreasing. These declines have numerous associated causes – among them, increases in singlehood, increases in cohabitation, and greater emphases upon individualism and materialism. The Retreat from Marriage and Parenthood seeks a broad examination of the retreat from marriage and parenthood.
Featuring diverse theoretical and methodological chapters exploring the many issues pertaining to these seismic changes, the authors chronicle the many dramatic impacts from shifts in attitudes to marriage and family. The chapters include discussion of pressing issues such as increasing ages at marriage, singlehood, cohabitation and alternative forms of intimate relationships, the impact of financial stress upon marriage and fertility, consequences of changing age structures, racial and ethnic variations in marriage and parenthood rates, changing meanings of family lineage, the impact of marriage and fertility declines upon other social institutions, and gender differences in the appeal of marriage and parenthood.
Acknowledging the reality of these shifts in marriage and fertility rates, and that they warrant greater attention by researchers, this is an insightful edited collection for scholars of family research.
Part I. Reasons, Views, and Values Toward Marriage
- Chapter 1. Challenges and Choices: Unveiling the Motivators Behind Delayed Marriage in Iran; Milad Bagi
- Chapter 2. Understanding the Cognitive and Emotional Processes of Singles from the Perspective of Attachment Theory; Lucija Šutić, Karmen Korda Orlović, Matea Šoštarić, and Margareta Jelić
- Chapter 3. Transforming Marriage Purpose in Contemporary China: The Role of Cohort and College Education; Yiqing Gan and Wenjing Qin
- Chapter 4. It’s About Survivors, Not Sex: Exploring Future Aspirations of Undergraduate Survivors of Sexual Assault; Ioana Podarita and Christina L. Scott
- Part II. Reasons, Views, and Values Toward Parenthood
- Chapter 5. Reasons, Views, and Values Toward Becoming a Parent: A Mixed Method Examination; Brittany Stahnke, Morgan Cooley, and Amy Blackstone
- Chapter 6. Subjective Evaluations of Personal and Public Well-Being and Expected Future Childbearing; Karen Benjamin Guzzo and Sarah R. Hayford
- Chapter 7. Understanding the Lowest-low Fertility of Contemporary China: The Multidimensional Reproductive Beliefs among Chinese Youth; Ting Li
- Chapter 8. (De)Coupling of Marriage and Fertility Intentions: Evidence from a Survey of College Students in China; Zheng Mu, Mengxin Shi, Yu Zhao, and Chan Zhang
- Chapter 9. "I'll take one for the team": Individual and Couple-Level Decisions about Sterilization; Sharon Sassler, Amanda Jayne Miller, and Katharina Geppert
- Part III. Diversity in Marriage and Parenthood
- Chapter 10. Single But Not Singular: Exploring the Diverse Realities of Singleness in Indonesia; Karel Karsten Himawan and Christina Claudia
- Chapter 11. Navigating Romance: The Enduring Challenges of College-Educated Black Women; Sarah Adeyinka-Skold and Austin Colby Guy Lee
- Chapter 12. Trends in Cohabitation and Marriage by Experience of Economic Vulnerability in the United States; Margaret Gough Courtney
- Chapter 13. Moving together or Living apart: Cross-border Couples between Hong Kong and Shenzhen under the COVID-19 Pandemic; Xinyu Shi and Jing Song
- Chapter 14. Gendered Employment Realities in Dual Earner Couples: A Framework for Understanding the Differential Effects of Earning Levels for Evaluations of Mothers and Fathers; Ziding Shen and Jody Clay-Warner
Sampson Lee Blair is a Family Sociologist and Demographer at The State University of New York, Buffalo, USA. His research interests include parent-child relationships, mate selection, marriage, and fertility.
Zheng Mu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore. Her general research interests focus on trends, social determinants, and consequences of marriage and family behaviors, with a focus on how marriage and family have served as inequality-generating mechanisms.