The past century has seen striking changes in family formation in Ireland. Family dynamics are fundamental aspects of social change, but they have been neglected by social research in Ireland since the 1970s. This thesis draws on already available national data to study movements into marriage and parenthood in detail and thereby improve our understanding of family dynamics. The research focuses, in the main, on the 1926 to 1991 census period; a period characterised by the transition from high rates of nonmarriage and large family sizes to more standard European levels. The study primarily addresses the class dimension of family formation. Social class remains a strong predictor of marriage and fertility patterns. The study first maps the long-standing trend of higher rates of non-marriage and higher rates of marital fertility in the poorer sections of Irish society. The fertility levels of the class categories experiencing economic marginalisation have remained high so that the burden of dependency is heaviest among working class and farming families. Fertility decline was, however, evident in all socio-economic groups. Secondly, the thesis provides the first serious examination of quantitative evidence to assess the hypothesis that high rates of marital fertility act as a marriage deterrent. Despite the availability of more effective fertility controls, marriage plans continue to be influenced by the size of the prospective family. The results highlight the importance of economic resources as a prerequisite to marriage. Economic rationality is not, however, the only driving force. Thirdly, the thesis investigates the degree to which changes in family formation were related to changes in the composition of Irish society. A standardisation exercise isolating the effects of population structure revealed that class compositional changes cannot account for changes in male fertility rates over the course of the twentieth century but, were important in understanding declining rates of celibacy.

Using extrafamilial child sexual abuse (CSA) as an example of family trauma, the author interviewed 62 parents of sexually abused boys on multiple occasions to analyze the organization of gender, race, and class in parental coping processes. Despite access to alternative interpretations of CSA that challenge conventional notions of gender, parents in this study typically relied on traditional themes to make meaning of the CSA experience. The author organized the data analytically around gender strategies and found that parents used race- and class-specific gender strategies in the aftermath of trauma. Most important, mother-blame is theorized as a form gender reaffirmation. The author uses the term gender reaffirmation to illustrate the way social actors recuperate after a situation has been interpreted as detrimental, challenging, or stressful to heteronormative gender relations. Mother-blaming accounts encouraged race and class enactments of gender that had negative consequences for women and helped secure men's cultural power.

This thesis studies the dynamics of parents’ time with children. It uses self-reported time diary data to empirically document discrepancies between high- and low-educated parents’ time spent in various childcare activities. By doing so, the study considers one important but under-researched form of childhood inequality, namely inequality in parental time investment. The thesis is among the first to provide an extensive and detailed empirical documentation of variations in parents’ time use with children and to examine the effect of macro-structure and policy context on parenting behaviour. Using the American Time Use Survey (2003-2008), the thesis first investigates variations in parents’ time spent in different types of childcare among white parents in the US. Then, the American Heritage Time Use Survey (1965-2010) is employed to examine whether differences between high-and low-educated parents’ time spent with children have been growing or diminishing over time. Finally, the Multinational Time Use Survey (1965-2008) is used to explore the relationship between specific policies, macro-economic structure and childcare across time and across countries. The results can be summarized as follows. High-educated parents provide more primary childcare for their children compared to low-educated parents. The difference is particularly acute during the early years of childhood, and the gap is particularly wide for childcare activities which are fundamentally important for the social and cognitive development of children. This parental investment gap, most notably between high-and low-educated mothers, has been widening in the US. The main source of this widening phenomenon is the steady increase in high-educated mothers’ time spent in interactive and developmental childcare activities, rather than in routine and physical childcare activities. The analysis of cross-national data shows that the strong positive effect of education on childcare is a cross-national occurrence. However, the strength of this association varies considerably across time and across countries: universal paid leave for mothers and a gender egalitarian labour market structure help alleviate the education and gender gap in childcare. Mothers provide more primary childcare as the number of available paid leave weeks increases, while fathers increase their contribution to primary childcare as the percentage of women in the labour market increases. The provision of paid leave for mothers decreases the effect of education on primary childcare, and specific family policies as well as gender egalitarian socio-economic contexts can help alleviate inequalities in parental time investment in children.

I use the German Socio-Economic Panel to explore three dimensions of couples' career success: career input (hours), career output (wages) and happiness. I focus on West German parents because, until recently, they faced low levels of state-level childcare support and adverse attitudes towards maternal employment. I investigate the extent to which couples specialize in paid work in the long term. Previous approaches – even those using couple-level longitudinal data – failed to explore this fully, instead examining men and women separately, or a single transition. I develop a “dual curve” approach and find that even among the 1956-65 female birth cohort (which faced low state-level support for dual employment) only a fifth of all couples adopt full specialization in later life. A sizable proportion – a third – moves into dual fulltime employment, while half of highly educated couples adopt such employment. Highly educated women are not only less likely to permanently specialize but also more likely to try working full-time, possibly because their partners' comparative advantages are lower. I explore whether the take-up of work hour flexibility relates to rises in both the respondent’s and their partner’s wages. Men and women benefit from working flexibly, even when controlling for selection into work hour flexibility with growth-curve and fixed effects analysis. Moreover, there is a positive cross-partner wage effect, which is particularly pronounced for mothers, suggesting that men – the main users of the policy – use this measure to support their wives' careers. Are dual career couples (equal human capital investment) happier than specializing couples? I create a human capital measure to account for differential human capital during periods of non-employment, which has been ignored in past analyses. I find that women in dual career couples are unhappier when the child is young but happier later in life. Conversely, women who give precedence to their partner’s career in terms of human capital investment grow unhappier.

This thesis investigates in what ways the family matters for educational outcomes. Six research questions are answered. First, is family size associated with familial resources? Second, is having a large family associated with lower levels of objective and subjective educational outcomes and has this changed over the 20th century? Third, is there evidence of an association between family size and emotional health and life perspectives of young people? Fourth, is there any evidence of an association between family size and the degree of confidence and sociability? Fifth, do parenting strategies vary by family size? Sixth, is there evidence if a causal relationship between family size and educational outcomes? The British Household Panel Survey, the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England and the ONS Longitudinal Study are used to answer these questions. The key findings from the observational studies are as follows. First, as family size increases there is a reduction in familial resources. Second, as a result of resource dilution there is a reduction in the highest qualification attained; this finding is robust to alternative measures of educational outcomes. Third, there is a positive relationship between family size and reporting poor emotional health and external locus of control. Fourth, there is some evidence that the manner in which the young person socialises varies by family size. Fifth, parenting strategies vary by family size; these strategies are positively associated with GCSE achievement and ameliorate the negative family size association. Sixth, testing the resource dilution model using twins as an exogenous increase in family size found that there is weak evidence of a causal relationship between family size and educational outcomes. This thesis addresses the influence of the family on inequalities in education. The findings have important implications for future research on this topic.

This study is an inquiry into the school life of pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers. The purpose of the study is to gain insight into conditions that exist in schools that make it possible for pregnant and parenting teenagers to be successful learners in school. An additional purpose is to gain insight into the difficulties pregnant and parenting mothers face that hinder their school success. Four research questions guide this study: Research Question 1: What conditions in schools do teenagers report make it possible for them to be successful leaners in school once they become pregnant? Research Question 2: What conditions in school do teenage, mothers report make it possible for them to become successful learners in school once they have a baby? Research Question 3: What do teenagers report as the major difficulties that hinder them from being successful learners in school once they are pregnant? Research Question 4: What do teenage mothers report as the major difficulties that hinder them from being successful learners in school once they have a baby? This study employs qualitative research methods. Twenty-one participants across the United States were interviewed. The interviews were transcribed verbatim then rewritten as narrative profiles. Each profile was searched for data that answered the four research questions. An open-coding strategy was used to identify themes in each narrative profile, and then across profiles that emerged for each research question. Three themes emerged on conditions in school that support learning: Social/Emotional Support, School Programs, Practices and Policies and Characteristics of Self. The mirrored opposite of these themes emerged as themes that hinder learning. In addition, three themes that hinder learning outside of school emerged: Lack of Social and Emotional Support Outside of School, Life Circumstances and Time. The challenges and support individual school settings create are complex because of the many variables that effect how the individual and the learning environment interact. Striking diversity, as well as common perceptions about the conditions that support and hinder success in school were evident in the findings.

This longitudinal study examined the experience of caregiving among a nationally-representative sample of 10,537 middle-aged adults participating in Wave 1 and Wave 2 of the Health and Retirement Study. Individuals were classified as parent caregivers, child caregivers, and multiple (parent and child) caregivers. The low incidence of multiple caregiving found among these middle-aged adults questions the validity of the phenomenon described as the "sandwich generation." Females comprised the majority of the parent, child, and multiple caregiving groups. Contrary to expectations, Black and Latina caregivers were not more likely than whites to hold parent and multiple caregiving roles. A high frequency of caregiving role losses and a low frequency of caregiving role assumptions occurred between Wave 1 and Wave 2. Most notable was the finding that 41% of multiple caregivers and 70% of parent caregivers in Wave 1 became noncaregivers in Wave 2. In addition, only.4% and 6.5% of women assumed multiple care and parent care, respectively. These findings suggest that the experience of caregiving during the middle-generation years is of short duration and likely to decrease over time. No support was found for the "caregiving pile up effect" (Doress-Worters, 1994) among those holding multiple caregiving roles. Rather, female caregivers experienced a decrease in well-being regardless of their caregiving role transitions, while caregivers who gained or maintained caregiving reported better physical health than those who lost caregiving. In addition, caregivers' well-being did not differ from that of noncaregivers, with the exception of ADLs (better for caregivers). Ethnicity was found to play an important and complex role in predicting transitions in caregiving and well-being. As hypothesized, being a Black or Latina caregiver who lost parent care predicted worse well-being. With regards to the maintenance or assumption of child care, however, being a minority woman accounted for worse well-being. The negative consequences of child caregiving for Latinas is especially intriguing given their greater likelihood to maintain child care. There was some support for the notion that minorities' traditional family values in support of caregiving predict better well-being for women maintaining child care or for multiple caregivers.

This study examines current understanding of the experience of Puerto Rican migrant women as they cope with a new environment. Acculturation theory is analyzed and found limited in its conceptualization of migration as confined largely to the individual. An interdisciplinary review of the literature is used to explain the process of adaptation as an interplay of personal and social factors. The personal and social functions of ethnicity and gender are found critical in migrant women's search for economic advancement. A demographic account of the experience of Puerto Ricans in the United States is provided. A review of empirical studies suggests that being head of household is a significant factor keeping Island born Puerto Rican women out of the labor force. This economic disadvantage is seen to affect the process of acculturation, and reciprocally, acculturation is seen as a requirement for labor force participation. A multidimensional framework is developed which explains that the exclusion of these women from the labor force is rooted in this country's issues of gender and ethnicity. Educational implications are discussed and suggestions for public policy are included. Future research must investigate the effect of prevailing social influences on migrants which place assimilation as their most desirable status. Acculturation studies must focus on the interrelated nature of ethnicity and gender and incorporate into their analyses the effect of socioeconomic resources on adjustment. The experience of migrant Puerto Rican women heads of household must be further examined and new methods derived to quantify their status by means of the available census procedures. A longitudinal national study of the experience of Puerto Ricans in the United States would provide significant interdisciplinary impact.

This dissertation addresses two central debates in the scholarship on Black families: the disorganization versus superorganization debate seeking to characterize the racial differences in family organization, and the culture versus structure debate seeking to specify the causes of those differences. In combination, these debates produce four main approaches—cultural deficiency, cultural resiliency, structural resiliency, and structural destruction. Focusing on giving, receiving, and exchanging kin support as measures of family integration and using the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, this dissertation empirically examines these four approaches and in the process challenges the assumptions entailed in these debates. First, it suggests that neither the superorganization nor the disorganization theorists accurately capture racial distinctions in kin support. Black and White families differ in the type of support rather than in its overall prevalence. Blacks are more involved in instrumental and child care help; Whites report greater involvement in financial and emotional support. Further, gender is crucial for understanding racial differences: Black and White men are very much alike, while there are many differences among women. Racial differences also vary by kin type: Whites are more involved in intergenerational support; Blacks are more involved in support transfers with siblings and other relatives. Second, this dissertation suggests that both structure and culture are important in understanding racial differences and similarities in kin support, although structure is more important for the creation of racial differences. Blacks' structural disadvantage reduces their support involvement, producing a lower prevalence of financial and emotional support. This clearly supports the structural destruction theory. The data, however, also offer partial support for the structural resiliency approach: The lower SES of Blacks increases their instrumental help through its effects on family structure. In terms of culture, this study found that cultural values of Blacks boost their kin support, which supports the cultural resiliency approach. In contrast, the data offer no support for the cultural deficiency approach. Based on these findings, this dissertation argues that the general either/or terms of these debates are problematic and emphasizes the need for synthetic rather than dichotomous approaches to discussing Black families.

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine nuptial patterns among Chinese and Japanese American women. Specifically, this study compared the prevalence of and reasons for differential rates of marriage and timing of first marriage among non-Latino white, Chinese and Japanese American women. Using 1980 PUMS census data, the marriage patterns of the three racial-ethnic groups are examined. Comparisons are also made between the native born and foreign born in each racial-ethnic group. Native born Asian American women are found to have higher rates of non-marriage than their foreign born counterparts or native white women. An accelerated time model also is utilized to estimate the net effects of birth cohort, education, English proficiency, and mixed ancestry on the waiting time to first marriage for each racial-ethnic group. As expected, education significantly increases the time to first marriage among the racial-ethnic groups of women. The final section of the dissertation compares the household and socioeconomic characteristics of the never and ever married respondents. Never married women are found to have higher educations, incomes, and occupational statuses than ever married women. Native Asian American women are more frequently employed than native white women, regardless of marital status.