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Articles 1 - 9 of 9
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Reinstitutionalizing Families: Life Course Policy And Marriage In The Military, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Zhun Xu
Reinstitutionalizing Families: Life Course Policy And Marriage In The Military, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Zhun Xu
Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist
The transition to adulthood has become an increasingly telescoped process for Americans with marital formation occurring increasingly later in the life course. It is therefore striking to find a context like the U.S. military where marriage rates bear an anachronistic resemblance to those of the 1950s era. Using narrative data from life history interviews with military affiliates collected as part of a larger study on the impact of institutions on families, we show that the military has reinstitutionalized military families at the same time that civilian families are becoming deinstitutionalized. Structural conditions of modern military service, such as war deployment …
Do Black-White Racial Disparities In Breastfeeding Persist In The Military Community?, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Zhun Xu, Wanda Barfield, Irma Elo
Do Black-White Racial Disparities In Breastfeeding Persist In The Military Community?, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Zhun Xu, Wanda Barfield, Irma Elo
Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist
Objective: We conduct a comparative analysis of breastfeeding behavior between military and civilian-affiliated mothers. Our focus is on African American mothers among whom breastfeeding rates are lowest. The military context may mitigate conditions associated with low breastfeeding prevalence by a) providing stable employment and educational opportunities to populations who face an otherwise poor labor market and b) providing universal healthcare that includes breastfeeding consultation. Methods: Using Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) data for which we received special permission from each state to flag military affiliation, we analyze civilians and military affiliate in breastfeeding initiation using logistic regression and breastfeeding …
Racial Disparities In Us Infant Birth Outcomes: A Protective Effect Of Military Affiliation?, Jennifer H. Lundquist
Racial Disparities In Us Infant Birth Outcomes: A Protective Effect Of Military Affiliation?, Jennifer H. Lundquist
Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist
Research has been unable to determine why African Americans have higher infant mortality and preterm birth prevalence than whites, even taking into account measurable social and economic differences. This is, in part, due to the difficulty of adequately measuring the impacts of racial inequality and residential segregation. As an alternative approach, this paper comparatively examines infant outcomes among military-affiliated and civilian black and white women. The military setting provides higher-than-average economic equality and universal healthcare access. Although military-affiliated populations are usually left out of most major datasets, we construct a new variable that allows us to identify military affiliation using …
The Dynamic Lives And Static Institutions Of The "Two Armies:" Data From The 1999 Survey Of Active Duty Personnel, Daniel Burland, Jennifer H. Lundquist
The Dynamic Lives And Static Institutions Of The "Two Armies:" Data From The 1999 Survey Of Active Duty Personnel, Daniel Burland, Jennifer H. Lundquist
Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist
The U.S. Army consists of two distinct functional components: soldiers serving in combat roles, on the one hand, and those who serve in support positions, on the other. Do these two functionally distinct segments differ culturally as well? Empirical researchers utilizing qualitative methods have supported a ‘‘Two Armies’’ concept. This article examines the phenomenon quantitatively by using a nationally representative sample of the active duty population. The authors find that there is a statistically significant difference between support and combat soldiers that holds even after taking into account differing demography. Interestingly, this is true mainly of White soldiers, and the …
Ethnic And Gender Satisfaction In The Military: The Effect Of A Meritocratic Institution, Jennifer H. Lundquist
Ethnic And Gender Satisfaction In The Military: The Effect Of A Meritocratic Institution, Jennifer H. Lundquist
Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist
This article reevaluates traditional racial and gender disparities in the work satisfaction literature by examining the U.S. military: an institution that has ameliorated many racial inequalities while exacerbating gender conflict. The military departs from civilian society in some analytically useful ways, making it a unique, though underutilized, setting for examining inequality. Using data from the Pentagon’s 1999 Survey of Active Duty Personnel (SADP), results suggest that black males and females, Latino males and females, and white females all experience greater perceived benefits to military service than do white males along several dimensions of self-assessed job satisfaction and quality of life. …
A Comparison Of Civilian And Enlisted Divorce Rates During The Early All Volunteer Force, Jennifer H. Lundquist
A Comparison Of Civilian And Enlisted Divorce Rates During The Early All Volunteer Force, Jennifer H. Lundquist
Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist
The belief that enlisted military divorce rates are unusually high is a recurring theme expressed among those living in the military community, yet quantitative data on military divorce rates remain a virtual lacuna. The all-volunteer enlisted force also happens to be an almost all-married enlisted force. Assessing the degree of marital dissolution experienced by military personnel has important implications for the well being of military families and also for readiness levels and reenlistment likelihood. In this paper, I analyze underutilized military data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and find that enlisted divorce rates in the Armed Forces are …
The Black–White Gap In Marital Dissolution Among Young Adults: What Can A Counterfactual Scenario Tell Us?, Jennifer H. Lundquist
The Black–White Gap In Marital Dissolution Among Young Adults: What Can A Counterfactual Scenario Tell Us?, Jennifer H. Lundquist
Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist
One of the most heavily studied subfields of family sociology is that of racial disparities in family formation trends. While divergent black–white patterns in divorce are well documented, their underlying causal factors are not well understood. Debates on whether such differences are due to socioeconomic compositional differences, cultural differences, or some degree of each continue to surface in the literature. In this article, I use the U.S. military as an institutional counterfactual to larger society because, I argue, it isolates many of the conditions commonly cited in the literature to explain race differences in divorce trends. Using the National Longitudinal …
Family Formation Among Women In The U.S. Military: Evidence From The Nlsy, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Herbert Smith
Family Formation Among Women In The U.S. Military: Evidence From The Nlsy, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Herbert Smith
Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist
Although female employment is associated with lower levels of completed fertility in the civilian world, we find family formation rates among U.S. military women to be comparatively high. We compare enlisted women with civilian women using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,547), the only data set to measure simultaneously the nuptiality and fertility of both populations. Using propensity score matching, we show that the fertility effect derives primarily from early marriage in the military, a surprisingly ‘‘family-friendly’’ institution. This shows that specific organizational and economic incentives in a working environment may offset the more widespread contemporary social …
When Race Makes No Difference: Marriage And The Military, Jennifer H. Lundquist
When Race Makes No Difference: Marriage And The Military, Jennifer H. Lundquist
Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist
While “retreat from marriage” rates have been on the rise for all Americans, there has been an increasing divergence in family patterns between blacks and whites, with the former experiencing markedly higher divorce, nonmarital childbearing and never-marrying rates. Explanations generally focus on theories ranging from economic class stratification to normative differences. I examine racial marriage trends when removed from society and placed in a structural context that minimizes racial and economic stratification. I compare nuptial patterns within the military, a total institution in the Goffmanian sense, which serves as a natural control for the arguments presented in the literature on …