Frank Furstenberg | University of Pennsylvania (original) (raw)
Papers by Frank Furstenberg
Population, Space and Place, 2021
We show that the joint examination of family indicators offers new insights to understand family ... more We show that the joint examination of family indicators offers new insights to understand family change across low-and middle-income countries. We operationalize this idea through the concept of family configuration. A family configuration is a confluence of interrelated conditions under which individuals form families. We measure family configurations using indicators for different dimensions of families: family forms and stability, gender relations, household structure, reproduction, and the timing of family formation events. We use data from 251 Demographic and Health Surveys disaggregated by urban and rural areas. Multiple Correspondence Analysis and clustering techniques allow us to summarize our 20 indicators into three factorial axes, and our 502 units into six country-area clusters (family configurations). We provide an in-depth description of these family configurations, how they change over time, and how they distribute across the globe. Our main conclusion is that global family change emerges from a complex interplay between the steadiness of traditional ways of forming families and gender relations, and the rapidly changing dynamics in the realms of fertility, contraception and timing of family formation. In most regions of the world, countries display different family configurations, and this diversity is larger among urban areas than rural ones. Together, these results underline the need to conceptualize population dynamics from a systemic perspective, i.e., from a perspective that focuses on the confluence of demographic indicators.
Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, 2011
The "Great Recession" has hurt many families across the United States, yet most research has exam... more The "Great Recession" has hurt many families across the United States, yet most research has examined its impact on those already considered poor or working poor. However, this recession has affected middleincome families, whose experiences with economic challenge have seldom been looked at in any detail. Such families have recently been called "the new poor," "the missing middle," and "families in the middle. " One in seven American children under age 18 (10.5 million) has an unemployed parent as a result of this recession, and because economic mobility for children in the U.S. is affected by their parents' earning capacities, these children's educational and employment futures may be permanently constrained. The research presented here, which is informed by Weberian stratification theory and capital theories, is based on a small longitudinal subset of a larger two-country, multicity, mixed-methods study. Two waves of in-person interviews between spring 2008 and late fall 2009 revealed how families experienced the economic downturn and the management strategies that parents used to try to counter its negative effects. Parents were better able to provide financially for their children's daily needs and support children's current school activities, despite income and job challenges and losses, but less able to continue to develop children's future-enhancing capital.
Social Class and Democratic Leadership, 1989
This research derives from the most recent wave of a longitudinal study of nearly 500 families in... more This research derives from the most recent wave of a longitudinal study of nearly 500 families in urban Philadelphia neighborhoods collected over a 9-year time span. Earlier findings revealed remarkable continuity in success trajectories from early to mid-adolescence despite hazards imposed by poor neighborhoods, low economic standing, and poor schooling opportunities. Despite this stability, qualitative interviews with the adolescents suggested a flattening scope of success and an increasing scope of failure and risk during the transition to adulthood for minority men. This paper describes the association between the youths ' performance in 1991 and their socioeconomic standing in 1999 for different race and gender subgroups. Findings from logistic regressions support the premonition of a growing racial divergence for minority men. The findings also suggest that early and late adolescent attributes do not mediate the effect of race on early adult success. The research highligh...
Contrary to popular impression, the absolute level of teenage childbearing in the United States h... more Contrary to popular impression, the absolute level of teenage childbearing in the United States has not risen during the past decade, but has actually declined. Moreover, the newly discovered "epidemic" of adolescent pregnancy is not recent; elevated levels of teenage childbearing can be traced to the beginning of the baby boom after the Second World War. Nevertheless, the issue does seem more pressing now than ever before. In this chapter we shall touch on some of the reasons for this issue's prominence. We shall look at the evidence in the literature on the social consequences of teenage childbearing for adolescent parents, their offspring, and members of their family of origin. After assessing this evidence, we shall briefly mention some of the policy initiatives open for us for preventing premature childbearing and for ameliorating its deleterious effects when it does occur. Disciplines Family, Life Course, and Society | Gender and Sexuality | Sociology This book c...
Teen pregnancy is back in the news. After 15 years of decline, the trend in teen birth rates tick... more Teen pregnancy is back in the news. After 15 years of decline, the trend in teen birth rates ticked upward in 2006. Coupled with the ongoing media spotlight on the popular film Juno and the pregnancy of Britney Spears’ younger sister, we’re once again wringing our collective hands over kids having kids. But are these concerns really warranted? To what extent does teen pregnancy lead to mothers’ and children’s long-term poverty? Have policies adopted to deter early childbearing been effective in discouraging teens from having children before they are ready to shoulder the responsibilities of parenthood? To answer these questions, it’s necessary to put the issue in proper historical context, and to cast a sober eye on existing policies that were employed to keep rates of teenage childbearing low. Disciplines Family, Life Course, and Society | Gender and Sexuality | Sociology This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/sociology_papers/13 Teen pre...
Across the Western world and in other nations with advanced economies, a remarkable transformatio... more Across the Western world and in other nations with advanced economies, a remarkable transformation in family systems took place during the final third of the 20th century. The institution of marriage, once nearly hegemonic, lost its nearly universal appeal. Marriage now takes place later in life in virtually all nations with advanced economies, and, not uncommonly, it is delayed indefinitely. New family forms have proliferated gaining legitimacy in the 21st century as alternatives to heterosexual marriage. Specifically, a sharp rise occurred in the prevalence of cohabitation both as a prelude and alternative to matrimony; divorce and remarriage rates have increased in most nations, creating growing family complexity; the legitimation of same-sex unions has changed the form of the family; and, there is a growing level of voluntary childlessness.
Due to scarcity of research about men, gender differences in transition to adulthood in Sub-Sahar... more Due to scarcity of research about men, gender differences in transition to adulthood in Sub-Saharan Africa remain poorly documented. We adopt a novel perspective on this topic by examining gender gaps in the ages of first union and sex in 27 countries, focusing on measures of central tendency and dispersion. Gender differences in the age of first union decreased, driven by postponement among women with relatively late pattern of union formation. Due to concurrent persistence of very early unions among a sizable portion of women's populations, within-country heterogeneity in the ages of first union increased substantially among women. Hence, although forces responsible for earlier union formation among women than among men are weakening, these changes affect population strata unequally. Gender differences in the age of first sex decreased to a lesser extent, but in some countries, they disappeared or reversed, suggesting a shift in the relationship between gender and timing of sexual initiation. Changes in partnership formation are more heterogeneous across countries among men than among women, indicating that timing of transition to adulthood among men is more context specific. We show importance of including men in research on partnership formation and exploring heterogeneity in this process both within and between populations of women and men.
Journal of Marriage and Family, 2020
This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has... more This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as
Journal of Marriage and Family, 2020
This article reviews the recent history of kinship research, noting the relative neglect of the t... more This article reviews the recent history of kinship research, noting the relative neglect of the topic in recent decades. The lack of scholarly and empirical work on kinship has been hampered by both the absence of survey and qualitative research on contemporary kinship practices. The author focuses on what is known and not known about how individual put into practice kinship in the standard, nuclear form of the family. There is surprising in attention to the ceremonial family and, little is know about how families draw boundaries and construct kinship on ritual occasions in the literature. The author concludes by suggesting research strategies for examining both how kinship is constructed and practiced in the United States and in other advanced economies. Across the Western world and in other nations with advanced economies, a remarkable transformation in family systems took place during the final third of the 20th century. The institution of marriage, once nearly hegemonic, lost its nearly universal appeal. Marriage now takes place later in life in virtually all nations with advanced economies and, not uncommonly, it is delayed indefinitely. New family forms have proliferated, gaining legitimacy in the 21st century as alternatives to heterosexual marriage
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 2015
The Future of Children, 2010
Adolescent Mothers in Later Life
As we have repeatedly stressed, the variability in the life course of early childbearers was trem... more As we have repeatedly stressed, the variability in the life course of early childbearers was tremendous. Some mothers had a history of welfare dependence while others managed to escape it; some married before the birth of the child, some soon after, and some never; some mothers obtained additional schooling, and others dropped out; some had many children, while others had few. By examining the occurrence, timing, and sequencing of these early events in the mother's life course, we were able to explain subsequent patterns of economic achievement and fertility in Chapter 3. This chapter examines whether these same life-course events also explain children's outcomes. Understanding the life course of a single individual is complex, and the interrelation of multiple life courses is even more so. The diversity of the mother's experience will result in vastly different childrearing environments, which, in turn, influence children's behavior. Four aspects of the maternal life course will be given special scrutiny in this chapter: marital history, schooling, fertility, and changing economic resources. Maternal life course and children's environment Economic resources will determine much of the variability in children's environments. Material well-being may influence a variety of contextual conditions: safety of the neighborhood, residence in a particular neighborhood, attendance at a particular school, interaction with a particular peer group, access to cultural opportunities, availability of informal networks of other adults, and importance of the street culture in determining behavior.
Marriage & Family Review, 1980
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2007
Demography, 2012
Parental spending on children is often presumed to be one of the main ways that parents invest in... more Parental spending on children is often presumed to be one of the main ways that parents invest in children and a main reason why children from wealthier households are advantaged. Yet, although research has tracked changes in the other main form of parental investment—namely, time—there is little research on spending. We use data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine how spending changed from the early 1970s to the late 2000s, focusing particularly on inequality in parental investment in children. Parental spending increased, as did inequality of investment. We also investigate shifts in the composition of spending and linkages to children’s characteristics. Investment in male and female children changed substantially: households with only female children spent significantly less than parents in households with only male children in the early 1970s; but by the 1990s, spending had equalized; and by the late 2000s, girls appeared to enjoy an advantage. Finally, the shape of ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2011
Population, Space and Place, 2021
We show that the joint examination of family indicators offers new insights to understand family ... more We show that the joint examination of family indicators offers new insights to understand family change across low-and middle-income countries. We operationalize this idea through the concept of family configuration. A family configuration is a confluence of interrelated conditions under which individuals form families. We measure family configurations using indicators for different dimensions of families: family forms and stability, gender relations, household structure, reproduction, and the timing of family formation events. We use data from 251 Demographic and Health Surveys disaggregated by urban and rural areas. Multiple Correspondence Analysis and clustering techniques allow us to summarize our 20 indicators into three factorial axes, and our 502 units into six country-area clusters (family configurations). We provide an in-depth description of these family configurations, how they change over time, and how they distribute across the globe. Our main conclusion is that global family change emerges from a complex interplay between the steadiness of traditional ways of forming families and gender relations, and the rapidly changing dynamics in the realms of fertility, contraception and timing of family formation. In most regions of the world, countries display different family configurations, and this diversity is larger among urban areas than rural ones. Together, these results underline the need to conceptualize population dynamics from a systemic perspective, i.e., from a perspective that focuses on the confluence of demographic indicators.
Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, 2011
The "Great Recession" has hurt many families across the United States, yet most research has exam... more The "Great Recession" has hurt many families across the United States, yet most research has examined its impact on those already considered poor or working poor. However, this recession has affected middleincome families, whose experiences with economic challenge have seldom been looked at in any detail. Such families have recently been called "the new poor," "the missing middle," and "families in the middle. " One in seven American children under age 18 (10.5 million) has an unemployed parent as a result of this recession, and because economic mobility for children in the U.S. is affected by their parents' earning capacities, these children's educational and employment futures may be permanently constrained. The research presented here, which is informed by Weberian stratification theory and capital theories, is based on a small longitudinal subset of a larger two-country, multicity, mixed-methods study. Two waves of in-person interviews between spring 2008 and late fall 2009 revealed how families experienced the economic downturn and the management strategies that parents used to try to counter its negative effects. Parents were better able to provide financially for their children's daily needs and support children's current school activities, despite income and job challenges and losses, but less able to continue to develop children's future-enhancing capital.
Social Class and Democratic Leadership, 1989
This research derives from the most recent wave of a longitudinal study of nearly 500 families in... more This research derives from the most recent wave of a longitudinal study of nearly 500 families in urban Philadelphia neighborhoods collected over a 9-year time span. Earlier findings revealed remarkable continuity in success trajectories from early to mid-adolescence despite hazards imposed by poor neighborhoods, low economic standing, and poor schooling opportunities. Despite this stability, qualitative interviews with the adolescents suggested a flattening scope of success and an increasing scope of failure and risk during the transition to adulthood for minority men. This paper describes the association between the youths ' performance in 1991 and their socioeconomic standing in 1999 for different race and gender subgroups. Findings from logistic regressions support the premonition of a growing racial divergence for minority men. The findings also suggest that early and late adolescent attributes do not mediate the effect of race on early adult success. The research highligh...
Contrary to popular impression, the absolute level of teenage childbearing in the United States h... more Contrary to popular impression, the absolute level of teenage childbearing in the United States has not risen during the past decade, but has actually declined. Moreover, the newly discovered "epidemic" of adolescent pregnancy is not recent; elevated levels of teenage childbearing can be traced to the beginning of the baby boom after the Second World War. Nevertheless, the issue does seem more pressing now than ever before. In this chapter we shall touch on some of the reasons for this issue's prominence. We shall look at the evidence in the literature on the social consequences of teenage childbearing for adolescent parents, their offspring, and members of their family of origin. After assessing this evidence, we shall briefly mention some of the policy initiatives open for us for preventing premature childbearing and for ameliorating its deleterious effects when it does occur. Disciplines Family, Life Course, and Society | Gender and Sexuality | Sociology This book c...
Teen pregnancy is back in the news. After 15 years of decline, the trend in teen birth rates tick... more Teen pregnancy is back in the news. After 15 years of decline, the trend in teen birth rates ticked upward in 2006. Coupled with the ongoing media spotlight on the popular film Juno and the pregnancy of Britney Spears’ younger sister, we’re once again wringing our collective hands over kids having kids. But are these concerns really warranted? To what extent does teen pregnancy lead to mothers’ and children’s long-term poverty? Have policies adopted to deter early childbearing been effective in discouraging teens from having children before they are ready to shoulder the responsibilities of parenthood? To answer these questions, it’s necessary to put the issue in proper historical context, and to cast a sober eye on existing policies that were employed to keep rates of teenage childbearing low. Disciplines Family, Life Course, and Society | Gender and Sexuality | Sociology This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/sociology_papers/13 Teen pre...
Across the Western world and in other nations with advanced economies, a remarkable transformatio... more Across the Western world and in other nations with advanced economies, a remarkable transformation in family systems took place during the final third of the 20th century. The institution of marriage, once nearly hegemonic, lost its nearly universal appeal. Marriage now takes place later in life in virtually all nations with advanced economies, and, not uncommonly, it is delayed indefinitely. New family forms have proliferated gaining legitimacy in the 21st century as alternatives to heterosexual marriage. Specifically, a sharp rise occurred in the prevalence of cohabitation both as a prelude and alternative to matrimony; divorce and remarriage rates have increased in most nations, creating growing family complexity; the legitimation of same-sex unions has changed the form of the family; and, there is a growing level of voluntary childlessness.
Due to scarcity of research about men, gender differences in transition to adulthood in Sub-Sahar... more Due to scarcity of research about men, gender differences in transition to adulthood in Sub-Saharan Africa remain poorly documented. We adopt a novel perspective on this topic by examining gender gaps in the ages of first union and sex in 27 countries, focusing on measures of central tendency and dispersion. Gender differences in the age of first union decreased, driven by postponement among women with relatively late pattern of union formation. Due to concurrent persistence of very early unions among a sizable portion of women's populations, within-country heterogeneity in the ages of first union increased substantially among women. Hence, although forces responsible for earlier union formation among women than among men are weakening, these changes affect population strata unequally. Gender differences in the age of first sex decreased to a lesser extent, but in some countries, they disappeared or reversed, suggesting a shift in the relationship between gender and timing of sexual initiation. Changes in partnership formation are more heterogeneous across countries among men than among women, indicating that timing of transition to adulthood among men is more context specific. We show importance of including men in research on partnership formation and exploring heterogeneity in this process both within and between populations of women and men.
Journal of Marriage and Family, 2020
This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has... more This is the author manuscript accepted for publication and has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as
Journal of Marriage and Family, 2020
This article reviews the recent history of kinship research, noting the relative neglect of the t... more This article reviews the recent history of kinship research, noting the relative neglect of the topic in recent decades. The lack of scholarly and empirical work on kinship has been hampered by both the absence of survey and qualitative research on contemporary kinship practices. The author focuses on what is known and not known about how individual put into practice kinship in the standard, nuclear form of the family. There is surprising in attention to the ceremonial family and, little is know about how families draw boundaries and construct kinship on ritual occasions in the literature. The author concludes by suggesting research strategies for examining both how kinship is constructed and practiced in the United States and in other advanced economies. Across the Western world and in other nations with advanced economies, a remarkable transformation in family systems took place during the final third of the 20th century. The institution of marriage, once nearly hegemonic, lost its nearly universal appeal. Marriage now takes place later in life in virtually all nations with advanced economies and, not uncommonly, it is delayed indefinitely. New family forms have proliferated, gaining legitimacy in the 21st century as alternatives to heterosexual marriage
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 2015
The Future of Children, 2010
Adolescent Mothers in Later Life
As we have repeatedly stressed, the variability in the life course of early childbearers was trem... more As we have repeatedly stressed, the variability in the life course of early childbearers was tremendous. Some mothers had a history of welfare dependence while others managed to escape it; some married before the birth of the child, some soon after, and some never; some mothers obtained additional schooling, and others dropped out; some had many children, while others had few. By examining the occurrence, timing, and sequencing of these early events in the mother's life course, we were able to explain subsequent patterns of economic achievement and fertility in Chapter 3. This chapter examines whether these same life-course events also explain children's outcomes. Understanding the life course of a single individual is complex, and the interrelation of multiple life courses is even more so. The diversity of the mother's experience will result in vastly different childrearing environments, which, in turn, influence children's behavior. Four aspects of the maternal life course will be given special scrutiny in this chapter: marital history, schooling, fertility, and changing economic resources. Maternal life course and children's environment Economic resources will determine much of the variability in children's environments. Material well-being may influence a variety of contextual conditions: safety of the neighborhood, residence in a particular neighborhood, attendance at a particular school, interaction with a particular peer group, access to cultural opportunities, availability of informal networks of other adults, and importance of the street culture in determining behavior.
Marriage & Family Review, 1980
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2007
Demography, 2012
Parental spending on children is often presumed to be one of the main ways that parents invest in... more Parental spending on children is often presumed to be one of the main ways that parents invest in children and a main reason why children from wealthier households are advantaged. Yet, although research has tracked changes in the other main form of parental investment—namely, time—there is little research on spending. We use data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to examine how spending changed from the early 1970s to the late 2000s, focusing particularly on inequality in parental investment in children. Parental spending increased, as did inequality of investment. We also investigate shifts in the composition of spending and linkages to children’s characteristics. Investment in male and female children changed substantially: households with only female children spent significantly less than parents in households with only male children in the early 1970s; but by the 1990s, spending had equalized; and by the late 2000s, girls appeared to enjoy an advantage. Finally, the shape of ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2011