These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Dimensions and crystallization of family-size norms.
    Author: Ballweg JA, Klemmack DL.
    Journal: Sociol Spectr; 1984; 4():1-15. PubMed ID: 12280128.
    Abstract:
    A structured interview schedule was administered to a nationwide sample of 9232 ever-married Philippine women between the ages of 15-49 to examine the relationships among maximum acceptable, ideal, and minimum acceptable family size to determine whether couples conceive of family size in terms of a range of acceptable sizes; to ascertain how selected demographic characteristics relate to these dimension of family size; and to determine how the relationships of actual family size to maximum acceptable, ideal, and minimum acceptable family size affect use of contraceptives. Questions concered current number of children, the ideal number of children for a family in the barrio, how many children the female would consider to be "too many;" and how many children the female would consider to be "too few." As expected, maximum acceptable family size (median = 6.53) was larger than ideal family size (median = 4.34) which was larger than minimum acceptable family size (median = 3.03). In only 9.7% of the cases were these 3 numbers equal. The median difference between maximum acceptable and minimum acceptable family size was 3.07 children and in 30.7% of the cases this difference was 5 or larger. Thus, family size norms did not appear to be crystallized, and norms concerning appropriate family size appeared to incorporate tolerance limits of some form. 76.6% of the respondents reported a maximum acceptable family size larger than ideal family size. Over 40% of the families had 5 or more children; 19.5% had 7 or more children. Age and length of marriage were positively correlated with maximum acceptable, ideal, and minumum acceptable family size. Those who were older had less crystallized family size norms and a larger insurance effect than those who were younger and who had been married for a shorter time. Level of educational attainment was negatively correlated with actual, maximum acceptable family size. Those who reported higher maximum acceptable, ideal, and minimum acceptable family size were less likely to use contraception than those who reported lower scores on these measures, but the relationships were quite small. Those who had more children were more likely to use contraception than were those who had fewer children. Contraceptive use increased as actual family size approached either maximum acceptable or ideal family size. The data supported the assumption that couples conceived of family size in terms of a range of acceptable alternatives rather than single number. Thus, the range of acceptable alternatives might be quite large. The tasks for those who want to reduce the rate of population growth might be reconceptualized in terms of encouraging couples to have what they conceive of as a "minimum acceptable" family in terms of size.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]