Week 7: Discussion Questions

Bumpass & Raley (1995)

1. This paper explores the definition of "single-parent family" and argues that families with cohabiting parents are often misrepresented as single-parent families. How do you feel about lumping cohabiting-parent families in with married-parent families? What are the different living arrangements possible, and how are they different from each other?

2. In light of the above discussion, are we also misrepresenting families where the father is not included in the household but is involved in parenting nonetheless?

3. Living with parents after having children seems to be a temporary living arrangement according to these results (especially for women reentering their parent's household). Are these extended family arrangements different in other cultures in terms of duration? Why are extended family households typically temporary in the U.S.? Under what circumstances do women and their children leave the grandparent household?

4. I think it would be interesting to look at children's ages at the time of each possible living arrangement (single-parent, cohabiting, extended/grandparent) because of the life course impact these arrangements may have for different ages and durations. What can we infer about children's ages from the analysis presented here?

Bumpass, Sweet and Martin (1990)

1. A crude measure of remarriage rate shows an observed increase of 12% (p. 748). However, Bumpass et. al. pointed out that "remarriage rates declined over this period by about 40% for widows and by about one-third for the divorced. What is the explanation for this paradox?

2. How do Bumpass et. al explain the declining remarriage rate?

3. In measuring the pace to remarriage, Bumpass et. al. talked about the limitations of using vital statistics (cf. Wilson and Clarke 1992). What are biases with this measure? What are the measures used by Bumpass et. al.? Why did they talk about the distribution of remarriage?

4. In Note 1, Bumpass et. al. mentioned the problem of "truncation by interview". What is the problem here? What is the solution?

5. What are the major subgroup variations in the remarriage rate?

6. What are the implications of the changing patterns of remarriage?

MacDonald and Demaris (1995)

1. According to Cherlin's incomplete institutionalization hypothesis, do remarriage and stepchildren families tend to have more or less marital conflicts?

2. What interactions did MacDonald and Demaris find between marital duration and step-children? How do they explain the interactions?

3. Couple disagreement is a challenge in studying marital conflict. How do MacDonald and Demaris deal with the problem? Do you understand their approach? What are SUR (Seemingly Unrelated Regressions)?

4. MacDonald and Demaris made a distinction between stepchildren only, and both stepchildren and biological children. What are their findings?

5. Booth and Edwards 1992 mentioned Halliday's unwillingness to leave marriage hypothesis to explain the instability of remarriage. Are the findings of MacDonald and Demaris consistent with this hypothesis?

Seltzer (1991)

1. Seltzer does not discuss whether never-married non-resident fathers ever cohabited with their children's mothers. How might non-resident father's post-cohabitation relationship to his child/ren differ from non-resident divorced/separated fathers or never-cohabited fathers?

2. What is the child's role in determining the amount or type of contact with non-resident fathers? How is this related to time since separation?

3. Are Seltzer's 3 aspects of parenting exhaustive? How well do the variables analyzed here measure those aspects?

4. How could social norms solidify the role of the non-resident father? Do you see any norms for this role in U.S. society today? What about other countries?