This research presents the processes and findings of an interdisciplinary study of mothers’ and daughters’ shared relations to film stars. Principally grounded within the cultural studies tradition of investigating the role of media in everyday life, the research explores the intergenerational transmission of film star tastes and preferences between mothers and daughters, building upon existing literature from the fields of star studies, family sociology, memory studies and audience research. It also takes a new perspective on the study of audiences for stars from the work of art anthropologist Alfred Gell, who posited the notion that the study of art should concern its ‘practical mediatory role’ within social interactions. The research was conducted by means of an empirical audience study of paired mother-daughter dyads of varying ages, class backgrounds and social circumstances, and was carried out in two phases: a preliminary online survey which recruited 92 mother-daughter pairs; and 16 follow-up telephone interviews with selected mothers and daughters. The first phase utilized quali-quantitative methods of analysis to explore various models of mother-daughter-star relations, while the second phase used a combined analytical approach that coupled an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis approach with elements of memory studies to further investigate those identified dyadic models. An overarching finding of the thesis is that film stars perform varying, but also evolving, functions within mother-daughter relationships depending upon the socio-demographic make-up of the dyad. Other more specific findings include: that class identifications are a key determinant in mother-daughter shared gender preferences in regard of admired stars, and that in mother-daughter relationships where there is a greater distance in their age gap, mothers specifically carve out shared times between the pair, using film stars as a common resource which provides a communicative coinage within their relations.

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This dissertation consists of three essays investigating the role of early life events, family environment and personal choices in shaping a child’s chances for human capital accumulation. The first essay examines how physical stature of a child measured in terms of age standardized height influences his/her selection for family labor activities vs. schooling in rural Ethiopia using malnutrition caused by exposure to significant weather shocks in early childhood as sources of identification for the child’s physical stature. We find no evidence that better physical stature of the child leads to his/her positive selection for full-time child labor activities. On the other hand we found reasonably strong and consistent evidence that physically more robust children are more likely to combine child labor and schooling than physically weaker children. The findings indicate that, although better early childhood nutrition leads to higher chances of attending school, it may also put the child at additional pressure to participate in family labor activities which may be reflected in poor performance in schooling. The second essay empirically investigates whether the quantity deficit in the children of the mother’s preferred gender is compensated through their favorable treatment in terms of investment in schooling and nutrition (referred to as compensating hypothesis) and to what extent the mother uses her bargaining power in the family to influence this process. We use data from siblings and twins in two rounds of the demographic and health surveys of Ethiopia with robustness checks using a similar but larger data set from India. We find the mother’s bargaining power working in the opposite direction to that of the compensating hypothesis in the case of child schooling and having no substantive role in the case of child nutritional health. Our findings for child schooling imply that mother’s empowerment could turn out to be unfavorable to a child’s attendance of schooling in the circumstances where the child is needed to help out with family activities. In the third essay we use date from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of the Youth (NLSY97) to examine the extent to which high school completion (and to a limited extent college enrollment) are influenced by the choice teenagers make as to when to start dating and/or engage in sex, how many dating and/or sex partners to maintain, and how frequently to engage in sexual and/or dating activities. We use indicators of parental and peer religiosity as instruments for teenager’s involvement in sex and dating activities. While our results for teenage dating are generally weaker than those for teenage sex, the overall pattern of our estimates suggests that teenage sex and dating could have significant effects not only on high school completion but also the subsequent enrollment in a college.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of learning gender and age labels on toddlers' toy preferences. Many researchers (e.g., Arthur, Bigler, Liben, Ruble, & Gelman, 2008; Martin & Halverson, 1981) have suggested that the acquisition of such labels should cause increased in-group preferences, and thus, increased interest in same-category toy preferences. In this study, we used feminine and masculine toys (e.g., a purse, a hammer) to test gender typed preferences and adult and child objects (e.g., toy keys, real keys) to test age typed preferences. Forty 18-20 month old children (M = 19.1 months) from primarily upper-middle class families participated in the study. After taking pre-test measures of their children's social label understanding and toy preferences, parents were randomly assigned with their children, to one of two conditions: the age condition (in which they were asked to practice "grown-up" and "kid") and the gender condition (in which they were asked to practice "boy" and "girl"). Parents practiced the labels with their children for approximately two weeks and returned to the lab. In the post-test session, children's social label understanding and toy preferences were again assessed. Additionally, parents were asked about their attitudes about other-gender toys and behaviors and about the toys their children had at home. The results indicated an interaction between test time and comprehension of the gender and age labels. Children in the age condition's performance on the age labels in the target word comprehension task improved from pre- to post-test. Children in the gender condition's performance on the gender labels also improved from pre- to post-test. However, there were no main effects of condition at post-test. As predicted, comprehension of labels was related to toy play in the age condition. Children who were more successful on the age labels on the word comprehension task also played more with toy items than real items at post-test. Comprehension of labels was not related to toy play in the gender condition. However, at pre-test, girls in the gender condition already exhibited strong sex typed behavior, so it is possible that the manipulation was not enough to change these extant preferences. These data partially support Bigler and Liben's (2006) Developmental Intergroup Theory and work by Martin and Halverson (1981) on role of cognitive processes in the formation of social stereotypes, preferences, and prejudice. / text