Motivations for parenthood among young adult college students

Two hundred and sixty three young adult college students responded to openended questions assessing their specific intentions, motives, and plans for having children. The most commonly stated motives for childbearing reflected a strong interest in establishing an identity and social network. Financial, marital, and emotional stability were identified as important factors influencing the timing of parenthood. Several significant sex differences were found for both motives and the timing of parenthood. These findings are discussed in terms of changing social norms regarding parenthood and changing sex role expectations.Portions of this research were presented at the Eastern Regional Psychological Association Convention in New York, April 1986. This research was funded by a grant from Trenton State College, Committee for Faculty and Institutional Research and Sabbatical Leave.     

Marriage patterns among Havik Brahmins: A 20-year study of change

Data on 94 women gathered during four field trips to a village located in the Malnad area of Karnataka form the basis of this examination of changes in Havik Brahmin marriage patterns over a 20-year period. Four case studies of marriages and two case studies of single women illustrate social change, particularly the influence of increased education, marriage age, and marriage choice. These case studies illustrate that, with an increase in marriage age and an increase in educational level, women have increased independence as daughters, brides, wives, and mothers. Concurrent with this is a decreased emphasis on ritual. Women have become assertive as they have perceived options. The socialization of women into learned helplessness and absolute dependence on men is in the past. Where women were perceived and perceived themselves as forever childlike, they now have grown to maturity. Men have to acknowledge women's educational achievements, especially when sisters achieve more than their brothers. With the recognition of feminine achievement has come increased independence for women. Mothers who have been bitter about their own limitations have encouraged daughters to achieve. With a change from an ascribed status of men as superior to achieved status based on merit has come increased opportunities for women.     

Students' attitudes toward university health services

This study measured students' attitudes toward a university's student health services (SHS) and identified factors that were related to their attitudes. A questionnaire surveying students' attitudes was administered to a sample of 150 students at the Oxford Campus of the University of Mississippi. Analysis of the data revealed that students' attitudes had a statistically significant correlation with the following variables: perceived medical care cost, amount of health information/education received during medical encounters, time spent in the waiting room of the SHS, sex of the student, and income of the student. There was no significant relationship between attitude and age.     

TEACHING SOCIAL LANGUAGE TO MODERATELY HANDICAPPED STUDENTS

Three students with moderate handicaps were taught to initiate and expand on conversational topics. The teaching procedure used stimuli generated from actual conversations with nonhandicapped peers. Generalization was assessed by audiotaping conversations between the handicapped students and their peers in natural school contexts without adult supervision. Results indicated that training generalized to natural contexts. These results were socially validated by undergraduate special education students, who rated tapes of two of the students' conversations during training phases as more socially competent than during baseline. Results are discussed in terms of the evaluation of complex social behavior as multioperant behaviors.     

Estimation for structural equation models with missing data

A direct method in handling incomplete data in general covariance structural models is investigated. Asymptotic statistical properties of the generalized least squares method are developed. It is shown that this approach has very close relationships with the maximum likelihood approach. Iterative procedures for obtaining the generalized least squares estimates, the maximum likelihood estimates, as well as their standard error estimates are derived. Computer programs for the confirmatory factor analysis model are implemented. A longitudinal type data set is used as an example to illustrate the results.This research was supported in part by Research Grant DAD1070 from the U.S. Public Health Service. The author is indebted to anonymous reviewers for some very valuable suggestions. Computer funding is provided by the Computer Services Centre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.     

Visual control of step length during running over irregular terrain

Running over uneven ground requires visually regulating step length to secure proper footing. To examine how this is achieved, we studied subjects running on a treadmill on a series of irregularly spaced targets. The movements of their lower limbs and coccyx relative to the targets were monitored opto-electronically by a Selspot system. The results indicated that step length was adjusted to strike the targets primarily by varying the vertical component of impulse applied to the ground during the stance phase. In contrast, horizontal impulse was not varied significantly, and changing the reach forward of the foot on landing contributed little to variation in step length. Changing the vertical impulse simply altered the step time proportionately. Thus the data are consistent with a time-based model in which vertical impulse is modulated by the optic variable delta tau (Lee, 1976) specifying the time gap that has to be bridged by the runner between two targets.     

Children's knowledge of prepositional phrase structure: An experimental test

A test of prepositional phrase structure in 4- to 6-year-old children's language is reported. Children's productions of PP and verb-particle sequences were elicited. Children produced pronominal and full NP objects of sequences corresponding to PPs and verb-plus-particle in the adult grammar. Prepositions freely took both pronominal and full NP objects (He's jumping over it. He's jumping over the table). In particle verb constructions, pronominal objects were placed immediately after the verb in all but a few cases (He's pushing it overnot He's pushing over it). With full NP objects, the preference was to place the verb after the particle (He's pushing over the table). These facts support an analysis in which if the child constructs a PP-over-P—NP structure for prepositional phrases but not for verb-particle sequences, and follows adultlike rules for these structures.This research was supported in its initial stages by NIH grant No. HD90647-03 to T. Roeper and S.J. Keyser and was completed while the author was supported in part by grants from the Graduate School Research Committee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and from the Spencer Foundation through the University of Wisconsin School of Education.     

Attitudes to new technology in relation to social beliefs and group memberships: A preliminary investigation

Though the term “new technology” is widely used and discussed, there has been very little systematic study of attitudes to technology and their relation to other beliefs and group memberships. This article describes an initial investigation into the nature of attitudes towards new technology (n=534 undergraduates) and demonstrates that, as yet, these attitudes are only weakly structured and are not fully integrated with other social beliefs. General evaluations of the benefits of technological advance appear to be almost unrelated to beliefs about the inevitability of these advances or the desire to acquire training to deal with them. Contrary to popular expectations, evaluations of video games are unrelated to other beliefs about technology while other social beliefs are, as yet, only weakly integrated with these attitudes. This study also identifies gender differences in the assessment of potential benefits and highlights other differences attributable to academic group memberships. These finding are discussed with reference to the literature on sex-role stereotyping and group socialization processes.     

Norms for employed daughters' and sons' behavior toward frail older parents

This study examined whether norms that concerning assisting frail older parents were different for daughters than for sons when the adult children are members of dual-earner couples. Data were gathered by telephone interviews from a probability sample of 315 adults residing in western Alabama. Of the 18 statements presented, statistically significant differences between the expectations for daughters and sons occurred in only three cases (help with housework, meal preparation, and yard work), suggesting substantial support for norms of equalitarianism. Further, there were few differences between the expectations held by females and by males for daughters and sons. Generally, the results suggested strong support for behaviors that facilitate the independent living of both adult children and their frail older parents.The authors acknowledge with thanks the assistance of the University of Alabama's Capstone Poll, which collected the data for this study.