A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

I use a divorce-stress-adjustment perspective to summarize and organize the empirical literature on the consequences of divorce for adults and children. My review draws on research in the 1990s to answer five questions: How do individuals from married and divorced families differ in well-being? Are these differences due to divorce or to selection? Do these differences reflect a temporary crisis to which most people gradually adapt or stable life strains that persist more or less indefinitely? What factors mediate the effects of divorce on individual adjustment? And finally, what are the moderators (protective factors) that account for individual variability in adjustment to divorce? In general, the accumulated research suggests that marital dissolution has the potential to create considerable turmoil in people's lives. But people vary greatly in their reactions. Divorce benefits some individuals, leads others to experience temporary decrements in well-being, and forces others on a downward trajectory from which they might never recover fully. Understanding the contingencies under which divorce leads to these diverse outcomes is a priority for future research.

The Consequences of Divorce for Adults and Children

This article reviews information on discriminatory attitudes and behaviors against obese individuals, integrates this to show whether systematic discrimination occurs and why, and discusses needed work in the field. Clear and consistent stigmatization, and in some cases discrimination, can be documented in three important areas of living: employment, education, and health care. Among the findings are that 28% of teachers in one study said that becoming obese is the worst thing that can happen to a person; 24% of nurses said that they are "repulsed" by obese persons; and, controlling for income and grades, parents provide less college support for their overweight than for their thin children. There are also suggestions but not yet documentation of discrimination occurring in adoption proceedings, jury selection, housing, and other areas. Given the vast numbers of people potentially affected, it is important to consider the research-related, educational, and social policy implications of these findings.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1038/oby.2001.108

Bias, Discrimination, and Obesity

/pdf/social-capital-a-theory-of-social-structure-and-action-4m7poq6byy.pdf

Social capital: a theory of social structure and action

Reviewers have consistently concluded that males perform better on mathematics tests than females do. To make a refined assessment of the magnitude of gender differences in mathematics performance, we performed a meta-analysis of 100 studies. They yielded 254 independent effect sizes, representing the testing of 3,175,188 Ss. Averaged over all effect sizes based on samples of the general population, d was -0.05, indicating that females outperformed males by only a negligible amount. For computation, d was -0.14 (the negative value indicating superior performance by females). For understanding of mathematical concepts, d was -0.03; for complex problem solving, d was 0.08. An examination of age trends indicated that girls showed a slight superiority in computation in elementary school and middle school. There were no gender differences in problem solving in elementary or middle school; differences favoring men emerged in high school (d = 0.29) and in college (d = 0.32). Gender differences were smallest and actually favored females in samples of the general population, grew larger with increasingly selective samples, and were largest for highly selected samples and samples of highly precocious persons. The magnitude of the gender difference has declined over the years; for studies published in 1973 or earlier d was 0.31, whereas it was 0.14 for studies published in 1974 or later. We conclude that gender differences in mathematics performance are small. Nonetheless, the lower performance of women in problem solving that is evident in high school requires attention.

Gender differences in mathematics performance: A meta-analysis.

▪ Abstract Until recently, social scientists were headed to consensus over the impact of the structural parameters of the sibling group, especially size and birth order, on educational and other status outcomes. New developments challenge this conventional wisdom, thus offering an opening for dialogue on this topic. We identify the utility and implications of studying the consequences of sibling configuration within sociology, across disciplines, and for public policy. Revisiting the association between sibship size and educational advancement, we evaluate challenges to long-held beliefs regarding this relationship. We then discuss the effects of birth order, highlighting recent declarations that these effects are more profound than previously believed. We next summarize scholarship on two less-explored components of the sibling matrix: spacing and sex composition. Finally, we consider generalizability of research done mostly in the United States to other countries. We hope examining and critiquing this r...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3069242.pdf

Reconsidering the effects of sibling configuration: Recent advances and challenges

Sociologists have long been interested in the consequences of psychiatrists' and clients' social location on diagnostic judgment. Previous research provided conflicting evidence on the effects of sex and race on diagnosis, but it has been suggested that with the institution of a formalized diagnostic system, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (Third Edition), the effects of gender and race on diagnosis have become minimal. We assess the accuracy of this claim using an analogue approach in which 290 psychiatrists evaluate two case studies. Case studies are manipulated so that approximately one-fifth of the clinicians, using DSM-III-derived criteria, evaluate a white male, a white female, a black male, a black female, or a client whose sex and race are not disclosed. Results indicate that sex and race of client and psychiatrist influence diagnosis even when clear-cut diagnostic criteria are presented. We conclude that it is premature to close the question of the influence of sex and race on diagnostic assessments.

Gender, race, and DSM-III: a study of the objectivity of psychiatric diagnostic behavior

Objectives. To determine whether school or nonschool environments contribute more to childhood overweight, we compared children’s gains in body mass index (BMI) when school is in session (during the kindergarten and first-grade school years) with their gains in BMI when school is out (during summer vacation). Methods. The BMIs of 5380 children in 310 schools were measured as part of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort. We used these measurements to estimate BMI gain rates during kindergarten, summer, and first grade. Results. Growth in BMI was typically faster and more variable during summer vacation than during the kindergarten and first-grade school years. The difference between school and summer gain rates was especially large for 3 at-risk subgroups: Black children, Hispanic children, and children who were already overweight at the beginning of kindergarten. Conclusions. Although a school’s diet and exercise policies may be less than ideal, it appears that early school environments contribute less to overweight than do nonschool environments. (Am J Public Health. 2007;97:696‐702. doi:10. 2105/AJPH.2005.080754)

http://epcschools.org/documents/contentdocuments/doc_23_5_198.pdf

The effect of school on overweight in childhood: gain in body mass index during the school year and during summer vacation.

We use the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS) to explore racial differences in perceptions of the etiology and treatment of mental illness. We find that African Americans are more likely than whites to reject the idea that mental illnesses are caused by either genetics or an unhealthy family upbringing, but this effect does not extend to other biological or environmental explanations of psychological disorders. We propose that blacks may be more skeptical than whites of genetic- and family-based explanations because of their resemblance to arguments that have been used to criticize blacks and justify their disadvantaged structural position. Additionally, we find that racial differences in etiological beliefs play a substantial part in explaining African Americans' tendency to have more negative attitudes than whites toward professional mental health treatment. These findings suggest not only that etiological beliefs may reflect broader political debates about race but also that these beliefs may beat the core of some of the differences in the attitudes of blacks and whites toward professional help-seeking

Nature, Nurture, Neither, Nor: Black-White Differences in Beliefs about the Causes and Appropriate Treatment of Mental Illness

We explore the effects of sibship density, i.e., the number of siblings closely spaced versus widely spaced, and sex composition, i.e., the number of sisters versus the number of brothers. Guided by two explanations previously put forth to account for the consistently found inverse relationship between sibship size and academic outcomes, the confluence model and the resource dilution hypothesis, we test whether these two structural parameters influence academic consequences. Analysis of the High School and Beyond data confirms a stronger negative effect of the number of siblings closely spaced than of the number of siblings widely spaced, an effect thiat endures into later adolescence even upon controlling for earlier test performance. Findings on sex composition, based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Highi Schlool Seniors of the Class of 1972, are mixed. Wefind no effect of sex comnposition on test performance, but find a negative one on grade-point average. We conclude by hlighilighltinig thie utility of decomposing sibship size into further coinponents and of obtaininig data thlat will facilitate such research efforts. Although the antecedents of fertility behavior have sustained long-standing interest among social demographers, research priorities have widened recently to encompass the consequences of differential fertility (Blake 1981). It is not only the question of which factors affect the number and timing of the children people have that intrigues social scientists but also the aftermath of varying sibship structures. The firmly documented inverse relationship between the number of -siblings and academic achievement, for example, has elicited considerable attention not only from demographers but also from sociologists with interests in education, social psychologists, status-attainment researchers, medical academicians, educators, and the public at large. While sociologists investigating educational processes view the determinants of ability and/or *This research was supported by NSF Grant SES-8508301 to Steelnan and a SpencerFellowship to Powell. The authors' names are listed in alphabetical order. Their contribultions are equLal. We appreciate assistancefromn Ann Smnith, Debra Brown, Donna Eder, Sutsan Engel, Carl Ek, and Christie Spruill. Commnentsfrom two anonymous reviewers are also gratefiully acknowledged. Please direct all correspondence to Lala Carr Steelinan, Departnent of Sociology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208. i) The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, September 1990, 69(1):181-206 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.111 on Tue, 09 Aug 2016 06:00:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 182 / Social Forces 69:1, September 1990 achievement as having value in their own right, others such as those elaborating models of status attainment see virtues in this topic because of the direct tie between ability/achievement and eventual educational and occupational attainment. Sewell and Hauser (1976) observe that a large component in the variance of the educational attainment of sons depends upon the independent effect of ability. Consequently, the number of siblings has become a standard inclusion in the usual set of status-attainment predictors (Blau & Duncan 1967; Featherman & Hauser 1978; Alwin & Thornton 1984; Sewell, Hauser & Wolf 1980; Blake 1985). Researchers, however, have failed to move forward by decomposing the size of the sibling group into its other theoretically meaningful axes. The research reported in this article augments previous theoretical and empirical endeavors on the consequences of the number of siblings by examining the effects of sibling density, i.e., the number of siblings within specific time intervals contiguous to the individual, and sex composition of the sibship, i.e., the number of brothers and the number of sisters, on academic performance. The objectives of this research are twofold: to underscore the merits of family density and sex composition as theoretically meaningful components of sibling structure and to provide substantive information on the effects of these variables on educational outcomes. Sibship Size and Academic Outcomes The body of research directed toward understanding the relationship between sibling configuration, intellectual growth, and actual educational performance continues to thrive. The usual thrust in this literature is aimed at the impact of the number of siblings, the effect of birth order, or the consequences of both. Although the contemporary trend has been to discount its significance, whether ordinal position in the family shapes an individual's level of ability remains a contested matter (Steelman 1985; Cicirelli 1978). Nonetheless, the negative relationship between the number of siblings and educational outcomes has received such consistent support that this pattem now is almost taken for granted (Steelman 1985; Cicirelli 1978; Anastasi 1956). Indeed this relationship is one of the firmest found in sociological research. It is from previous attempts to account for the family size/ability and achievement connection that the underpinnings for this work evolved. A variety of explanations for the deleterious impact of the number of siblings on educational performance has been put forth. While physiological and genetic reasons are sometimes advanced to account for this pattern (Grotevant, Scarr & Weinberg 1977; Bayer 1967), two environmentalist interpretations command the most acceptance in sociological circles. They are the confluence model and the resource dilution hypothesis.

Brian Powell

Papers

Reconsidering the effects of sibling configuration: Recent advances and challenges

Gender, race, and DSM-III: a study of the objectivity of psychiatric diagnostic behavior

The effect of school on overweight in childhood: gain in body mass index during the school year and during summer vacation.

Nature, Nurture, Neither, Nor: Black-White Differences in Beliefs about the Causes and Appropriate Treatment of Mental Illness

Beyond Sibship Size: Sibling Density, Sex Composition, and Educational Outcomes