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This chapter compares the timing and prevalence of transitions to independent living and family formation to determine whether young people are rejecting family formation and to ascertain how social structures that vary among a set of countries may be contributing to differences in the transition to adulthood. It describes the transition to adulthood for women in the United States and compares it with that of women in countries with contrasting social, economic, and policy contexts. It uses data from the U.S. National Survey of Family Growth and comparable data from the Family and Fertility Surveys carried out in Canada, Germany, Italy, and Sweden to illustrate differences in the timing of adult transitions and the degree of adherence to a “traditional” pattern of family formation between cohorts and nations. The chapter compares these cohorts in terms of the timing of their acquisition of family statuses (leaving the parental home, cohabitation, marriage, and childbearing), the prevalence of these transitions within cohorts, and the combinations of statuses acquired by a given age.

Attitudes, values, and beliefs are central factors in theoretical models of family formation behavior and key elements in understanding changing patterns of family formation. This chapter examines the influence of a broad range of attitudes on young people's experiences with premarital cohabitation and marriage. It looks at attitudes toward dimensions of family formation, such as cohabitation, premarital sex, marriage, and childbearing, as well as attitudes toward non-family activities that may compete with family formation, such as education, careers, and consumer spending. The chapter also discusses the role of parental attitudes in shaping children's attitudes and behavior. It argues that values, beliefs, and attitudes expressed in the family of origin are important aspects of the families themselves and have significant effects on adult children's family formation behavior. Thus, the chapter adds an examination of the role of mothers' attitudes in shaping their children's attitudes and behavior.

This chapter provides an overview of assessment and intervention issues in clinical practice with lesbian and gay adoptive parent families. It begins by describing the context of lesbian and gay adoption and then addresses the various phases of lesbian and gay adoptive parent family formation (from assessment to postplacement)—with an emphasis on the contexts influencing family development at these stages—as well as relevant assessment and intervention issues. Recommendations for adoption workers and therapists who work with lesbian and gay adoptive families at these phases will be made throughout. Case examples are provided to illustrate key issues and conflicts faced by these families, as well as opportunities and challenges for therapists.

This chapter examines the nature of slave family formation as determined by slaveholding size and sex ratios. How did enslaved people adapt to the physical and demographic boundaries of their containment when seeking a mate? What were the consequences for their domestic arrangements and family structures? By comparing families in different parts of the non-cotton South, this chapter shows that antebellum slaves usually strove to create two-parent households whenever possible; however, not all were able to realize that ideal, and those who could not adapted their marriage strategies and family lives accordingly.

In July 1925, the body of a young Chinese-Australian woman was dragged out of the harbour in Fremantle, Western Australia. An inquest ensued, leading to the trial of her husband for murder. From press reports and legal documents concerning the case emerge details of family life in the small Australian Chinese community of between-the-wars Perth. Drawing on Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson’s concept of the singularization of history, the chapter considers the implications of research on one person, or one family, for a subfield such as ‘Chinese-Australian history’, or ‘the history of Chinese women in Australia’.  Ruby’s was a singular story. How was it Chinese? How was it Australian? Where is the historiographical space for it to be recounted?

Italy and Britain differ greatly in the level, type, and pattern of women's labour market participation, in their normative and institutional contexts, and in the way that these have changed from the 1950s to the 2000s. This chapter looks at changes in the potential determinants of women's employment behaviour. It starts by describing trends in female activity rates, in the overall and sectoral distribution of demand and in women's supply characteristics. It then outlines changing patterns of family formation and the explanations given for them, focusing on the Italian low participation/low fertility equilibrium. Subsequently, it discusses changes in welfare state policies and in labour market regulations, with specific reference to those dimensions affecting women's movements in and out of paid work. Finally, by drawing on the existing empirical literature, the chapter illustrates how in Italy, Britain, and other European countries, attitudes towards gender roles and behaviours with regard to the gendered division of domestic and care work have changed across cohorts.

The main theories of household and marriage systems outlined by historians and demographers are unable to account for the astonishing variety of family and marriage patterns that characterize modern Italy. This chapter proposes a new interpretative framework, which singles out the goals and mechanisms of social reproduction as the main factor constraining marital behavior and household formation in the past. This theory is tested through an analysis of first marriage in five populations in northern and central Italy, characterized by different ecological, economic, and social conditions. The results reveal that coercive factors, determined by socioeconomic status and household composition, mattered much more than Malthusian economic constraints in the timing of and access to marriage.

This chapter describes how patterns of family formation and kin relationships have changed between 1960 and 2002, showing that there is more differentiation within families than there was in 1960 and that there is greater geographical mobility. Despite this, there are still very high levels of contact between members of families living in different households and there is little evidence of disembedding processes except among the most geographically mobile section of the middle class. The discussion looks at extended family networks, the extent to which they form kin groups, and their increased heterogeneity in terms of residence and occupation.

This is one of the central chapters of the book. It presents new measures of Attitudes to Family Formation. As in the case with Attitudes to Gender Roles, these were developed first on the basis of the qualitative study and next using factor analysis in the main study. Seven measures emerged which tapped Attitudes to Marriage, Attitudes to Cohabitation, and several dimensions of Attitudes toward being Single. Detailed results are presented for the measures including factor analytic results, percentage distributions for the representative nationwide sample and an analysis of differences among demographic groups. Selected quotes from the qualitative study are also presented to give nuance and an additional perspective to the attitudinal factors. This chapter also presents data on people’s previous cohabiting behaviour and perceptions of the facilitators and constraints to getting married.

Drawing on an exceptional collection of church admission relations from the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts, Part 1 examines the widely shared religious vocabulary through which Congregational church membership candidates during the period between 1680 and 1740 pledged to "walk answerably" to their doctrinal professions in the hope that a vengeful deity would not pour out affliction on their bodies, families, and communities. The multiple demands of a "Godly Walk" entailed spiritualizing everyday occurrences, meditating in secret, baptizing children in a timely fashion, and raising them in church fellowship. During the early decades of the eighteenth century, the rhythms of church affiliation were closely tied to family formation and social maturation, and women emerged as the primary source of religious authority. A godly walk was the key to safety and prosperity in this world, if not salvation in the next.

The chapter “Healthy Transitions to Family Formation” focuses on two features of family formation: preparing to build long-term partnerships and preparing to become parents. The chapter pays special attention to dating and sexuality, cohabitation, growing up in a stepfamily, and transitioning to parenthood. The discussion of becoming parents includes pre-birth preparations for parenthood, sharing childrearing responsibilities, and implications of parenthood for mental and physical health. Aside from exploring the diversity of growing up in a stepfamily, the chapter also highlights differences by gender, race, and ethnicity (when available in the literature) that may better help scholars understand how a variety of emerging adults form families and flourish in the process. Directions for future research are included throughout the chapter.

This chapter focuses on family as a key institutional setting within which religion and spirituality are formed. The authors explore how marriage and parenthood are tied to religiousness among the young people in the study. The authors first investigate the role of religion in leading young people to six different family pathways: married with children, married without children, cohabiting with children, cohabiting without children, single with children, and single without children. They then examine how these different stages of family formation affect the religious lives of the young people in the study. Of particular interest is the question of whether marriage and parenthood contribute to higher rates of religious retention among emerging adults.

This chapter first offers a rough sketch of post-1980 demographic developments in India and then turns to population policies and the controversies surrounding them. The Indian story is one in which the intrusion of the state and international agencies into the realm of family formation took on a striking form and force that separates it from other national stories surveyed in this book. India is also a case demonstrating truly exceptional levels of diversity within the same country. The changing and variegated Indian experiences in the politics and policies of population provide abundant evidence that politics needs to be defined as something that happens on many levels, and that population policies almost always fail when they appear from on high.

This chapter considers two related puzzles that are directly related to family formation (and dissolution) and to intrafamily allocation: the first deals with the increase in inequality in the United States in recent decades, and the second has to do with some remarkable trends in gender-specific demand for higher education. In addition, it also describes the main features of matching models, including a frictionless environment and notion of transfers, with particular emphasis on nontransferable utility, transferable utility, and imperfectly transferable utility. Finally, it discusses existing models of household behavior, such as the unitary model, the collective model, and noncooperative models, as well as bargaining models of the household. An overview of the book's content is also presented.

In order to better understand the determinants of family formation, we examined people’s values and priorities, as these undoubtedly contribute to people’s life choices. Taking into account social theory concerning the second demographic transition, increasing individualisation and post-materialist values, we developed measures of people’s priorities and values. We then explored the relative values and priorities of men and women and those in different family statuses, as well as their levels of satisfaction with various aspects of their lives. While men and women did not differ in terms of the importance of being in a relationship or having children, women – perhaps surprisingly – put a slightly higher priority on their freedom and independence and men put a higher priority on having a job or career. Married people, followed by cohabiting people, put a very high priority on having a relationship and having children, while single people were least likely to say a relationship and having children were was crucial to their well-being. The findings supported the notion that the relative importance of various values is associated with the likelihood of forming different kinds of unions or of remaining single.

This chapter introduces the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) which is the fourth of a set of world-renowned national cohort studies in Britain, each following a group of individuals drawn from the population at large from the time of their birth and onwards through later life. It contains the origins and objectives of the study, along with the results of its first survey. It notes that the first of these nationally representative cohort studies, the MRC's National Study of Health and Development, follows people born in 1946, followed by the 1958 cohort National Child Development Study (NCDS), and later by the British Cohort Study of 1970 (BCS 70), which are following members into mid-life, complete with records of their childhood, education, health, employment, and family formation. It further notes that each cohort study forms a resource for a wide range of research into many social and medical areas.