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This chapter uncovers the destabilizing and transformative dimensions of a legal process commonly described as assimilation. Lawyers working on behalf of a marginalized group often argue that the group merits inclusion in dominant institutions, and they do so by casting the group as like the majority. Scholars have criticized claims of this kind for affirming the status quo and muting significant differences of the excluded group. Yet, this chapter shows how these claims may also disrupt the status quo, transform dominant institutions, and convert distinctive features of the excluded group into more widely shared legal norms. This dynamic is observed in the context of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, and specifically through attention to three phases of LGBT advocacy: (1) claims to parental recognition of unmarried same-sex parents, (2) claims to marriage, and (3) claims regarding the consequences of marriage for same-sex parents. The analysis shows how claims that appeared assimilationist – demanding inclusion in marriage and parenthood by arguing that same-sex couples are similarly situated to their different-sex counterparts – subtly challenged and reshaped legal norms governing parenthood, including marital parenthood. While this chapter focuses on LGBT claims, it uncovers a dynamic that may exist in other settings.

The ideal worker norm refers to the belief that employees can and should be singularly devoted to work. Our purpose is to understand the extent to which workers buy into various components of ideal work and how unpopular components of the ideal worker norm persist. We hypothesize they persist, at least in part, because of pluralistic ignorance. Pluralistic ignorance entails situations in which most people privately reject a norm, but incorrectly assume others accept it.

Drawing on original survey data, we examine the extent to which US workers subscribe to a range of factors described in the ideal work literature. We test the pluralistic ignorance hypothesis by comparing workers’ agreement with, and their perceptions of their coworkers’ agreement with, these factors.

We find workers embrace some components of ideal work. Yet, regardless of gender or parental status, they dislike those components that involve working extremely long hours and prioritizing work at the expense of personal or family life. In addition, regardless of gender or parental status, workers experience pluralistic ignorance with respect to those components that involve prioritizing work at the expense of personal or family life.

Our findings suggest that researchers distinguish between different components of ideal work. They also suggest that everyone – not just women or parents – desire work–family balance. Lastly, because people often behave in ways that are congruent with what they mistakenly believe to be the norm, our findings suggest workers may unintentionally perpetuate family-unfriendly workplace standards.

This paper addresses revolutionary changes in the education, fertility and market work of U.S. families formed in the 1870s–1920s: Fertility fell from 5.3 to 2.6; the graduation rate of their children increased from 7% to 50%; and the fraction of adulthood wives devoted to market-oriented work increased from 7% to 23% (by one measure).

These trends are addressed within a unified framework to examine the ability of several proposed mechanisms to quantitatively replicate these changes. Based on careful calibration, the choices of successive generations of representative husband-and-wife households over the quantity and quality of their children, household production, and the extent of mother’s involvement in market-oriented production are simulated.

Rising wages, declining mortality, a declining gender wage gap, and increased efficiency and public provision of schooling cannot, individually or in combination, reduce fertility or increase stocks of human capital to levels seen in the data. The best fit of the model to the data also involves: (1) a decreased tendency among parents to view potential earnings of children as the property of parents and (2) rising consumption shares per dependent child.

Greater attention should be given the determinants of parental control of the work and earnings of children for this period.

One contribution is the gathering of information and strategies necessary to establish an initial baseline, and the time paths for parameters and targets for this period beset with data limitations. A second contribution is identifying the contributions of various mechanisms toward reaching those calibration targets.

Previous studies as well as anecdotes have indicated that parental involvement in adult children’s marital conflicts is fairly common in Korea. This study attempts to explain how in-law conflicts – arguably a structural outcome of the traditional Confucian family – lead to marital disruption in contemporary families.

This study adopts the hypotheses of the corporate group, mother identity, and gendered-role expectations, which are instrumental to understanding the social context in which the legacy of the Confucian culture interacts with the knowledge-based neoliberal economy to revive in-law conflicts. Divorced-couple data are from in-depth interviews and court rulings, and their analysis illustrates the trajectories of marital breakdown.

The findings provide support for the hypotheses. Parents, especially mothers, who heavily invested time and money in their children’s education and career building meddle in their marriages in hopes to ensure the best returns to their investment. Normative prescriptions of gendered roles provide references for the parents regarding the roles of their children and children-in-law, and the gaps between their expectations and perceived reality trigger parental meddling and in-law conflicts. Adult children who are indebted to the parents for their status formation may acquiesce to the parental intervention.

In the traditional patriarchal family, in-law conflicts were restricted to mother- and daughter-in-law relationships, but are now extended to mother- and son-in-law relationships, reflecting a paradoxical twist in gender-role expectations. This chapter suggests that heavy parental investment in their children can have an unexpected consequence increasing the probability of adult children’s marital disruption.

At the end of the 20th century, birth-rates had fallen below the replacement rate in many Western countries. Changing attitudes towards having children had resulted in very small families, even in childlessness, giving rise to the Vienna Institute of Demography analyzing EUROSTAT data on the most common reasons for Europeans between the ages of 18 and 39 being childless. Almost half of these young adults (48 per cent) said they did not want children because they had general concerns about the future; another 46 per cent lacked a steady partner, while 44 per cent reported enjoying the current childless lifestyle and believed it would be difficult to fit in children; more than a third of these young(er) adults feared the loss of leisure time. ‘Harder’ facts, such as the expense of having children and job pressures, seemed to matter less for the childless respondents, albeit still more than a third of them gave such reasons (quoted in Theil, 2006, p. 54). Concerns about the future, lifestyle and steady partnership outweigh other worries. The expense of having children, work commitments and related problems in balancing work and family may be further reasons for delaying or foregoing family formation, but are not of prime importance. Societies intent on encouraging young people to have children, and at a younger age, must take both concerns into account, i.e. invent a broad discourse on policies for children and families and at the same time design wide-ranging policies. Do they deliver? Can they deliver?

This study is designed to explore the process of integration and ethnic identity among South Asian immigrants in Norway. In this study I examine the extent to which different factors such as, time since migration, receptiveness of the host society, position in the labor market, schools, social networks, and interaction with the host society, contribute to immigrants’ integration and the construction of their identity in a multicultural society like Norway. Based on ethnographic methods including unstructured interviews of first-generation South Asian immigrants and their children in Norway, three different levels of integration are explained. The first level involves high ethnic identity and low integration and relates to first-generation immigrants who have accepted that a permanent return to their home country is impossible. The second level of integration is related to high ethnic identity and high integration. The individuals in this category are second-generation immigrants who are integrated into Norwegian society, while maintaining a high ethnic identity by strong allegiance to their parental norms and values. The third level is low integration and low ethnic identity and explained in terms of identity crisis, which sometimes causes an internal turmoil and disorientation for many immigrants.

Smartphones play an integral part in many children's lives. Their constant presence in various contexts and the multitude of affordances they present have a tremendous effect on how childhoods are lived today. One important aspect is the way children's interaction with smartphones can affect relationships and particularly generational relations. In this explorative study, we investigated Azerbaijani children's interaction with smartphones in the family and at school using the sociomaterial and relational approaches. Thinking relationally, we followed children's stories to unravel how smartphones can mediate different types of behavior and assist children in negotiating their place in generational order with the adults in their lives. Analyses suggest that smartphones can both present children with bargaining power to negotiate pleasure and fun as well as means to reinforce the generational order by children themselves. The findings point out that children often transfer social norms and expectations placed on them to the ways they use smartphones.

Purpose: Death is a universal inevitability of life, though parents and adults often report difficulty or concerns about discussing the topic with children. This investigation reports on how parents of very young children (ages 3–6) have or would discuss death with their child, and what parents consider in navigating such discussions.

Methodology: In-depth interviews were conducted with parents (N = 24) of very young children (ages 3–6) to develop a grounded theory of parents actual and anticipated approaches to discussing death with children.

Findings: Parents generally described either seeking to protect children’s “innocence” by avoiding or limiting conversations of death, or, seeking to promote children’s socioemotional competence in confronting the complexities of death through more extensive discussions. We identified four factors we hypothesize may influence parents intended strategies for navigating these approaches: (1) parents’ past and current experiences related to death, (2) children’s exposure to deaths, (3) cultural and personal beliefs about death, and (4) parents’ knowledge and awareness of their child’s cognitive competences. While protection of children’s “innocence” and cultivation of children’s socioemotional competences are not opposing goals, these concepts appeared to be situated on a continuum.

Originality/Value: Given the prevalence of death in contemporary media, and an ongoing global pandemic, young children’s exposure to death will remain heightened for the foreseeable future. Family scholars and practitioners would be wise to prepare to assist families and children thoughtfully and compassionately. We further explore tools, resources, and strategies parents and professionals have found helpful in navigating these discussions.