This research explores the sustainability of marriage, understood as long-term unions with high marital quality, by analyzing the styles of marital relationships in Switzerland. Using longitudinal representative data from the survey 'Social stratification, cohesion and conflict in contemporary families', we analyzed a subsample of 343 couples (1,029 observations) across three waves over 20 years. Cluster analysis identified five styles of marital relationship: Companionship, Bastion, Cocoon, Parallel and Association, based on several dimensions of family life. These styles were then linked to indicators of marital quality-marital satisfaction, relationship problems, and thoughts of separation, using multilevel mixed-effects regression models. Results show that couples who belong to the Companionship style, characterized by mutual commitment, external openness, and gender equality, report significantly higher marital quality. The Companionship style becomes more prevalent over time, as couples who initially developed Cocoon and Bastion styles (Institutional marriage) gradually switch to this style. In contrast, Association and Parallel styles (Individualistic marriage) remain relatively stable over time and are consistently associated with lower marital quality. These findings highlight the importance of relational dynamics within couples in maintaining sustainable marriages and demonstrate the predictive value of marital relationships over time.
Kinship lineage and inheritance norms in Ghana play a significant role in shaping family decisions. Research has shown that kinship lineage and inheritance norms determine kin membership for children by specifying whether they belong to their maternal or paternal family, as well as whether they can inherit properties of their biological father or mother. The notion of kinship membership has shaped parenting and child welfare practices in Ghana, including child maintenance payments and parental neglectful behaviours. This research explored whether kinship-based inheritance norms could influence decisions about selecting a grandmother (maternal vs. paternal grandmother) as a child's caregiver. We interviewed 31 grandmothers from matrilineal and patrilineal communities in Ghana to understand how their lineage and inheritance norms influenced the kinship placement processes for children who were living under their care. The findings were mixed, with only three grandmothers confirming the role of inheritance norms in their kinship care arrangements. Most of the grandmothers reported that the influence of kinship lineage and inheritance norms has weakened due to the following reasons: (i) the intestate succession law; (ii) discrimination due to inheritance norms; and (iii) the proliferation of interethnic marriages. The findings highlight the child welfare implications of inheritance norms.
Becoming a parent involves encounters with institutions that reach into the private domain of child-rearing [Koning, A. D., Johansen, M.-L., & Marchesi, M. (2022). Introduction special issue "Paradoxical orders: Parenting encounters, the welfare state, and difference in Europe". Ethnography, 23(3), 319-334. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138120919448]. This study examines how parenting ideals are produced and reshaped within everyday interactions between parents and Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) institution. The research material was generated from two ECEC groups, each comprising children aged 1-4 years, through ethnographic methods. Using the concepts of territory, territorialization, and de/reterritorialization [Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia II. University of Minnesota Press, Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2003). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press), the study highlights three recurring parenting ideals: diligent gear management, pedagogically oriented parental engagement, and punctuality. These ideals are reshaped in daily institutional encounters, where established expectations can be re-negotiated. The findings reveal how various sociomaterial elements shape what comes to be understood as 'good" parenting within ECEC settings. Overall, the article shows that ECEC institution both sets standards for parental behaviour and reflects broader societal goals and values. These findings highlight the importance of reflexivity in ECEC policy and practice, with attention to the temporal and contextual dynamics through which expectations toward parenting are formed and negotiated.
The objective was to map scientific production on the experiences of single mothers in an academic context over the last 10 years. The scope review followed the JBI method and PRISMA-ScR recommendations, with a protocol registered with OSF. Searches were conducted in the Scopus, Web of Science, PsycInfo, ERIC, and SocINDEX databases, supplemented by Google Scholar, the CAPES Thesis Catalogue, and manual searches of references covering the period from 2016 to 2025. The selection was conducted in Rayyan by two independent reviewers. Of the 5,302 records initially identified, nine studies comprised the final sample, all of which were qualitative in approach and came from the United States, Brazil, Israel, and the United Kingdom. Solo motherhood in academia highlights an institutional arrangement that presupposes an academic subject without caregiving responsibilities. The low number of studies and the geographical and temporal concentration of publications indicate the need to expand research that articulates intersectional perspectives, evaluates institutional retention policies, and deepens the role of maternal networks and collectives in the struggle for a more diverse university.
This study explores the historical evolution of educational expectations among Chinese parents from 2014 to 2022. Utilizing data from the nationally representative China Family Panel Studies, the research employs a comparative approach to analyze differences in the change pattern of educational expectations between rural parents from Eastern, Central, and Western China and urban parents. Two distinct datasets were generated to ensure robust findings. While two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multiple regression models were applied for the repeated cross-sectional data with independent samples across five cohorts (i.e. 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022), mixed-design ANOVAs were performed on four sets of longitudinal data with related samples. Results from the three groups of analyses consistently indicate a narrowing gap in educational expectations between rural and urban parents. The convergent trend is attributed to the steady rise of educational expectations among rural parents over time, particularly among those from Western China. Notably, the statistically significant disparity identified in 2014 has diminished by 2022. This convergence in parental expectations might reflect a significant shift in China's educational landscape. The diminishing expectational gap between rural and urban parents might suggest a potential reduction in the intergenerational transmission of educational disadvantage, indicating meaningful progress toward enhanced equity in educational opportunities. These findings offer fresh insight for rural educational policy development, intervention design, and curriculum reform. The Chinese developmental trajectories might have practical implications for other developing countries regarding their rural empowerment.
This study examines the intrinsic connection between two national security threats in Taiwan: ultra-low fertility crisis and the persistent possibility of armed conflict with China. Drawing on qualitative interview data from 204 voluntarily childless Taiwanese individuals, this article examines how geopolitical tensions and the threat of war across the Taiwan Strait shape reproductive decision-making. Three key findings emerged from the analysis: First, the perceived threat of war was cited as a factor in rejecting parenthood, though its salience varied among respondents. Second, war and other uncertainties - such as labour market insecurity, gender inequality, and educational pressures - interact to construct a broader pessimistic narrative that discourages family formation. Third, in the context of looming military conflict, participants' accounts suggest that pro-natalist policies are either deprioritized in favour of national defence or rendered unfeasible due to persistent political polarization between pro-China and anti-China camps. I contend that geopolitical tension can operate as an independent distal factor influencing fertility behaviour. Atypical stressors - such as the threat of war - are increasingly woven into the globalizing process, adding further complexity to the more traditional concerns surrounding material and economic insecurity.
This study examines the association between maternal economic abuse victimization and maternal financial socialization on offspring. We further investigate (1) whether maternal financial well-being and relational power mediate the economic abuse-financial socialization link; and (2) whether these pathways are stronger for daughters than for sons. Cross-sectional data from 500 Chinese mothers of early adolescents (10-14 years old) were used. Structural equation modelling was conducted to test the link between economic abuse and financial socialization. Bootstrapping was used to examine the mediating effects of maternal financial well-being and relational power, and latent moderated structural equation modelling was used to test the moderating effect of early adolescents' gender. Maternal economic abuse victimization was associated with lower-quality financial socialization in early adolescents. The mediating role of lower maternal financial well-being and diminished relational power was statistically significant. The moderating effect of early adolescents' gender was not statistically significant. Our findings highlight that the cost of economic abuse against mothers is transmitted intergenerationally to limit the financial capacity of the next generation via lower-quality parental financial socialization. Breaking the intergenerational cycle of this type of IPV requires financial capacity-building and support for both mothers and their offspring.
In this article, we explore how single fathers in Belgium navigate the dual expectations of caregiving and breadwinning after a divorce or separation. We focus on how societal norms around fatherhood and work shape men's ability to balance care responsibilities with employment demands. Through a two-step sampling design, we conducted qualitative interviews with 17 single fathers in our primary sample and 46 single fathers in an elaborative sample, capturing diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Our findings revealed a typology of four fathering strategies among Belgian single fathers: withdrawn fathering, traditional breadwinning, performing 'daddycation,' and family-centred fathering. We demonstrate how expectations regarding fatherhood significantly shape single fathers' abilities to balance work and parenting roles, highlighting variations in these expectations across different socio-economic contexts within Belgium. The study contributes a nuanced understanding of single fatherhood within an affluent European context, illustrating how societal norms and individual fatherhood ideologies influence their lived experiences.
Although fatherhood is not universally experienced as a central marker of masculinity, dominant cultural narratives in many societies continue to associate adulthood and masculinity with parenthood. While the phenomenon of childfreeness has attracted growing attention, research has focused mostly on women, leaving men's experiences unexplored. This study explores how childfree men in the Czech Republic make sense of their decision. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, 10 in-depth interviews with men aged 24-46 who identified as childfree were conducted. The analysis summarized four group experiential themes: Living freely on my own terms, Resisting the script, Relating and loving without reproducing, Standing by the decision for better for worse. Childfreeness was described not as a rejection of parenthood but as an affirmation of personal values such as freedom, autonomy and responsibility. Participants reflected on resisting family and societal pressures, finding alternative ways of care and preparing for ageing without children through friendships, community and financial planning. Several participants also emphasized the permanence and certainty of their decision by undergoing a vasectomy. By focusing on men in a Central European, post-socialist context, this study contributes to expanding the international literature on family diversity and highlights how childfreeness can be understood as a positive, value-driven path.
This article examines the parentification of elder sisters in contemporary Chinese families with large age gaps between siblings, a phenomenon intensified by recent Two- and Three-Child Policies in mainland China. Drawing on digital ethnography of Xiaohongshu and 27 in-depth interviews, this study explores how unmarried elder sister, often more than 15 years older than their siblings, are required to be de facto caregivers. Our findings reveal three key themes: involuntary parentification and zhangjie rumu cultural imperative; the structural spillover effects of sisterly parentification in economic disadvantage, romantic risk, and social stigma of fudimo; and the adaptive strategies elder sisters employ, ranging from emotional internalization to negotiated compromise and boundary withdrawal. We argue that elder-sister parentification constitutes a form of gendered reproductive labour that is both morally valorized and socially penalized. This study contributes to scholarship on sibling relations, gendered care, and intergenerational family change by demonstrating how sibling configurations intersect with broader state policy, demographic shifts, and kinship ideologies in contemporary China.
This paper examines how urban middle-class fathers in Indonesia redefine fatherhood through Ayah ASI (Breastfeeding Fathers), a digital community promoting paternal involvement in breastfeeding and caregiving. Using content analysis of Instagram posts over 31 months and interviews with the three co-founders of Ayah ASI and ten active followers, the study examines, through digital narratives and lived experiences, how these fathers challenge traditional gender roles and hegemonic masculinity. The analysis reveals two central themes. First, the collective wisdom of fathering, in which fathers use Instagram and community interactions to exchange knowledge, express vulnerabilities, and counter stereotypes of Indonesian men as absent fathers. Rather than merely assisting mothers, they develop shared caregiving competence through peer-based support. Second, re-embodiment in caregiving, where fathers train their bodies through childcare routines and breastfeeding support, fostering forms of intimacy often associated with maternal care. The study argues that Ayah ASI represents a distinctly urban, middle class, contemporary formation in which digital platforms facilitate new affective publics that normalize men's emotional presence and domestic involvement. By illustrating how care, embodiment, and mediated community building intersect, this research contributes to global debates on fatherhood, gender equality, and the role of social media in reshaping paternal identities in the Global South.
This article advances an understanding of how childfree Hispanic Latin Americans articulate narratives of their identity as childfree and their affective relationship with companion animals. It is situated within broader debates on critical posthumanism, identity construction, and family recognition. Drawing on qualitative phenomenological design, the research used interpretive textual analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews, an online survey distributed in Facebook childfree groups, and conversations in those groups. The findings reveal that childfree people consider their pets as family members; pets influence human practices and subjectivity through their presence, needs, and behaviours. By foregrounding relationality in non-human caregiving and affective attachment contexts, this study contributes to expanding conceptions of family in contemporary social life amid recent demographic changes in Latin America and the increasingly affective attachments between humans and their pets.
As family structures are becoming diverse across Europe, understanding how separated parents manage childcare is essential for supporting children's well-being. However, little is known about how physical custody arrangements relate to childcare arrangements. Informed by the triple bind framework, this study examined the relationship between custody arrangement and children's use of formal (e.g. preschool) and informal (e.g. family) care. We analyzed data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey. We included cross-sectional data collected in 2021 from separated parents of children ages 12 and younger living in 12 countries (N = 3786). Children with joint physical custody (JPC) had a higher probability of using formal care than children with sole physical custody (SPC) net of socioeconomic controls and country-level characteristics. Advantage in terms of employment, income, and country regime supporting dual-earner policies promoted formal care use. Physical custody arrangement typically was not related to informal care use. The use of informal care does not seem to be compensating for children in SPC's lower representation in formal care. Increasing access to formal care through universal programmes could provide a mechanism to promote child health and development.
This paper problematises how current relational theorizing - that still defaults to hegemonic western understandings of agency as the property of the individual - marginalises how agency can be exercised differently, particularly in relational cultures from collectivist societies. Our critique derives from empirical research findings conducted among twenty-six Filipino transnational family members living in Aotearoa New Zealand (hereafter, Aotearoa), whose migration was contextualized by structural migration in the Philippines. While Filipino family values and practices fit with ideas of relationality, their agency is not adequately captured by western notions of agency. This article contributes to and extends debates around agency occurring within relational theorizing in the family sociology scholarship by arguing for a more complex perspective on agency, which we call family agency. Family agency is collective in its constitution and orientation; it shapes the actions of family collectives by (in)directly co-authoring the agency of individual family members and jointly orchestrating actions to achieve collective family objectives, like migration. This concept provides a better understanding of relationality in contexts where people hold collectivist ideas of the self and collectivist norms for family.
This study examines partnership preferences of male refugees from Afghanistan and Syria who arrived in Germany between 2014 and 2016 and female residents of similar age. Using two comparable factorial survey experiments implemented in the first wave of the PARFORM panel and the ninth wave of the CILS4EU-DE panel, we analyse general tendencies in partnership preferences as well as partnership preferences based on education and religion. Our findings reveal a high willingness among recent male refugees to partner with resident women, whereas resident women exhibit significantly lower openness towards romantic relationships with male refugees. Comparing partnership preferences regarding the religion and education of a potential partner between male refugees and female residents who share similar characteristics reveals that homophily largely governs partner preferences on both sides, but deviations from this pattern point to alternative mechanisms, including status maximization and preservation of cultural identity. Overall, our findings indicate that beyond educational aspirations, cultural and religious distinctions can shape the expression of partner preferences, contributing to substantial asymmetry in intergroup partnership dynamics.
Parenting in the digital world is a complex task. This qualitative study explored mothers' experiences of and opinions about their children's screen use. The experiences of eighteen mothers of children aged 5-15, living across the UK, were documented via a diary and interviews, and the data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings show that screen regulation was subject to multiple influences, namely personal values, media narratives, the views of significant others and dominant discourses about what it is to be a 'good' mother. Enforcing screen regulations caused conflict for many of the mothers, together with feelings of guilt and anxiety. We draw on an ecological systems model as a lens to understand how attitudes to screens are influenced. Our study shows the complexity of digital parenting for contemporary mothers in the UK and its impact on the parent-child relationship.
