Mens & Maatschappij - Volume 86, Issue 4, 2011

Continuity and change in intergenerational family relationships: An examination of shifts in relationship type over a three-year period.

This paper focuses on shifts in adult child-parent relationship type using the first two waves of the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (NKPS). The analyses are informed by both a life transitions perspective, and the negotiation of relationships perspective. The intergenerational relationships typology represents different combinations of solidaristic acts and conflict. We employed Latent Transition Analysis to determine the prevalence and predictors of shifts. Less than 5% of the dyads shifted to a different type. Insofar shifts took place, they were most likely from the ambivalent type, and particularly so for relationships with mothers and daughters. Offspring (re)partnering, offspring divorce, parental widowhood, parental health decline, offspring unemployment, birth of a grandchild, and moving nearer, did not predict typology shifts, whereas the number of parental divorces was too small for analyses of change. Parental repartnering prompted a shift towards the discordant type with its low probabilities of contact and support exchange, and the relatively high likelihood of conflict over personal issues. Moving away prompted a shift from the ambivalent type with its high probabilities of supportive exchanges and conflict over material and personal issues. Over a period of three years, there is considerably more continuity in adult child-parent relationships than change.

World War II and occupational status attainment.

In this study we include personal war experiences in Duncan’s path model of status attainment to answer the following research question: To what extent can personal war experiences explain the occupational status of Dutch people who experienced World War II? We expect that personal war experiences have a detrimental effect on the human capital formation, which in turn leads to a lower educational level and a lower occupational status. To test our hypotheses, we use unique individual-level data from the ‘Onderzoek naar Doorsnee Nederlanders in de oorlog’, which was conducted from 2005 to 2010 (N = 346). The results of our path analysis show that people who were forced to work in Germany or the Netherlands during the war obtained a lower educational level and subsequently a lower occupational status. Physical destruction of one’s house also has a negative effect on occupational status through education. In addition, we found some direct effects of personal war experiences on the occupational status.

The effects of economic inequality and modernization on religious disaffiliation. A test for the Netherlands in 1975-1995.

In a recent study, using data from 60 nations, Ruiter and Van Tubergen (2009) found individuals from countries with highest economic inequalities to run the lowest risk of religious disaffiliation. Interestingly, modernization was found to have no effect on religious disaffiliation. A more stringent test is to investigate how economic inequality and modernization are related to religious disaffiliation within countries over time. In this study we use data from the Netherlands gathered between 1975-1995, a period in which religious disaffiliation was prominent. Our main findings run counter to those of Ruiter and Van Tubergen. In the Netherlands, higher levels of economic inequality and higher levels of modernization seem to increase religious disaffiliation.

The transition to parenthood and relationship satisfaction:.

A longitudinal dyadic perspective.

This study investigates to what extent (1) women’s and men’s relationship satisfaction within couples is similarly or differently affected by becoming a parent and (2) to what extent changes in work hours and hours spent on household labor affect a person’s own and their partner’s relationship satisfaction across the transition to parenthood. We made use of 12 waves of the British Household Panel Study (BHPS). We selected 689 couples, whose relationship remained intact during the period of observation, and where both members were employed, childless and living with their partner (28 percent were married) at the first moment of observation. Making use of a longitudinal dyadic approach to examine the impact of the transition to parenthood on relationship satisfaction, our results unequivocally reveal that relationship satisfaction of both members in a couple changed in tandem after becoming parents. The results indicate that men became less satisfied with their relationship across the transition to parenthood when they themselves spent more hours on household labor and when their spouse spent more hours on household labor. Although work hours and household labor affected people’s own and their spouse’s relationship satisfaction to some extent, these factors could not account for the strong persistent U-shaped effect the birth of a child had on couple’s relationship satisfaction.