Journal of Comparative Family Studies

Mặc dù cung cấp giáo dục và chăm sóc trẻ nhỏ (ECEC) đang gia tăng ở tất cả các quốc gia phúc lợi công nghiệp hóa, các sắp xếp thể chế về cung cấp và tài trợ dịch vụ vẫn khác nhau đáng kể giữa các quốc gia có cùng mức phát triển kinh tế. Những chính sách này có thể có những ảnh hưởng quan trọng đến việc giảm bất bình đẳng về thu nhập và thị trường lao động. Trong bài báo này, chúng tôi ghi nhận sự khác biệt trong các sắp xếp thể chế cho ECEC tại mười bốn quốc gia công nghiệp hóa. Sự biến đổi thể chế được liên kết với mức độ trách nhiệm công cộng về chăm sóc trẻ nhỏ khác nhau – giữa các quốc gia, và giữa các nhóm tuổi trong một số quốc gia. Mức độ mà việc chăm sóc được xã hội hóa có những hệ quả cho việc giảm bớt một số hình thức bất bình đẳng xã hội.

Data from the 2002 International Social Survey Program: Family and Changing Gender Roles (III) are analyzed for 25,750 married or cohabiting adults from 31 countries in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. We examine the associations between gender role attitudes, household labor, and family satisfaction. In addition, we include a measure of incongruence between ideology and behavior. We estimate individual, couple, and country factors and their association with family satisfaction in regression models, as well as variation within and between countries based on multi-level models. Overall, we find that involvement in housework and childcare is positively associated with family satisfaction. Family satisfaction is higher among those in more traditional relationships (man breadwinner, woman homemaker) relative to other family forms; yet interaction terms indicate that men report higher family satisfaction the more involved they are in housework and childcare, and the more they agree they ought to share housework and childcare. Although those in traditional partnerships report higher family satisfaction, nontraditional partners experience less incongruence between their attitudes regarding the division of labor in the home and actual behavior. Multi-level models indicate that only about 4 percent of the variation in family satisfaction is between countries, and satisfaction is associated with increased country development. Development and family policies that encourage and support father involvement in household responsibilities are likely to increase family satisfaction, even among couples in more traditional family roles; and this relationship appears to be consistent cross-nationally.

The Conflict Resolution Tactics between spouses, namely Reasoning, Verbal Aggression, and Violence, in Japan, India, and America were studied. Information concerning family structures reported by 635 Japanese, 391 Indian, and 139 American high school seniors to the family conflict resolution study questionnaires is the basis of this study. Four major findings emerged. First, high reliability and _adequate validity of the Conflict Resolution Tactics Scale (CTS) were obtainad. This fact reassured us about our usage of the scale in cross-cultural studies in this area. Secondly, the degree of conjugal violence was exceedingly high in American spouses followed by Japanese and then by Indian couples. This finding may reflect the nature of culture in each society, i.e., expressive American culture, reserved Japanese culture, and non-violent Indian culture. Thirdly, conflict resolution tactics between spouses in these three societies related closely to the principle of reciprocity. If the husband is intellectually oriented, his wife also tries to be intellectual in their conflict management. However, there is a tendency for the wife to become more aggressive if her husband tends to be abusive. Fourthly, it was revealed that the application of catharsis theory for the analysis of conjugal violence was not adequate. In other words, verbal aggression could not be conceived of as an alternative to physical violence. More constructive utilization of the conflict resolution tactics in familial conflict management might contribute to establishing a healthy and positive family relationship in our society.

This paper introduces kinscripts, a framework for exploring how families as multigeneration collectives, and individuals embedded within them, negotiate the life course. Kinscripts comprises three closely -woven, culturally-defined family domains: kin-work, kin-time, and kin-scription. Kin-work is the tasks that families need to accomplish to survive over time. Kin-time directs the temporal scheduling of family transitions. Kin-scription is the active recruitment and conscription of family members to take on kin-work. The kin-scripts framework emerged from ethnographic studies of multigeneration low-income black families in the United States. We argue, however, that the framework is relevant to the study of the life course of mainstream families as well.

American ties with secondary or more distant kin are nearly always mediated through ties with both parents in one’s own household. The structuring of kinship through affinal linkages takes place distinctively within the domestic household cycle, with relatives more important in the childhood/young married rather than the puberty/middle age phase. Additionally further differentiation and patterning develops around sex, generational, lineal, and collateral divisions of family organization. In absence of clear-cut corporate systems of kinship the ties developing through affinal relatives take on a significance as yet unappreciated by students of American social organization. Seventeen substantive conclusions are listed at the close of the paper.