Deck 10: Parents and Children

Question 1

Current trends in fertility have been unaffected by the legalization of abortion in 1973.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

What explains differential fertility rates in the United States by social class?

A) For highly educated, high income couples, the costs of children are seen to exceed the benefits.
B) Educated families value children more than less educated families.
C) U.S. welfare policy makes it attractive for poor women to have more children.
D) all of the above

Answer 2

A

Question 3

About a third of partners who decide to remain childless negotiate their decision prior to marriage.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Many of the undesirable social outcomes associated with single-parent families are related to high poverty rates among these households.

Question 5

The number of children in a family is

A) negatively related to intellectual outcomes for children. Children from small families score higher on intelligence tests than children from large families.
B) usually greater in families with well-educated spouses.
C) insignificant in determining marital satisfaction of parents.
D) all of the above

Question 6

According to the text,which of the following factors is not related to current fertility rates?

A) women's career considerations
B) the legalization of abortion in 1973
C) the divorce rate
D) the decline of religion in the United States.

Question 7

Research evidence indicates that children of gay and lesbian parents are as emotionally healthy as children raised by heterosexual parents.

Question 8

In general,the higher the woman's family income,the fewer children she will bear.

Question 9

About 20% of the households in the United States have three or more generations within them.

Question 10

Fertility

A) is not associated with race or ethnicity.
B) is higher among foreign-born women than native-born women.
C) is unrelated to religious observance.
D) all of the above

Question 11

Parenting styles tend to

A) produce different traits in children.
B) vary by social class.
C) have their own benefits and drawbacks.
D) all of the above

Question 12

Which of the following has not changed childhood in significant ways?

A) the separation of family, work, and school
B) the migration of families from rural to urban and suburban areas
C) less involvement of children in nonfamily organizations
D) declining size of families

Question 13

In general,since 1800 the fertility rate in the United States has

A) increased.
B) declined.
C) remained the same.
D) fluctuated drastically every five years.

Question 14

Latinas are the racial-ethnic group with the highest fertility rate.

Question 15

Which of the following relates to the social construction of childhood?

A) Methods of child rearing change over time.
B) Children differ because of their genes.
C) Children go through very similar experiences in all societies.
D) all of the above

Question 16

Which of the following is the most common path to voluntary childlessness?

A) Couples decide before they marry that they will not have children.
B) Couples postpone childbearing until they decide it is no longer a desirable choice.
C) Couples who intend to have children are pressured by their extended families not to have children.
D) The answers above are three equally common paths.

Question 17

The majority of U.S.mothers with school-age children are in the paid workforce.

Question 18

The birth of a child usually results in an improvement in marital satisfaction.

Question 19

According to the text,which of the following conclusions about parenting is appropriate?

A) Maternal instinct (that is, the biological imperative of mother love) is universal.
B) Men's and women's patterns of involvement in child rearing are unchanged throughout U.S. history.
C) What is defined as "natural" patterns of parenting depends on time, place, and social location.
D) Practices such as "shared mothering" or "other mothering" indicate that some women value the role of mother less than others.

Question 20

Pronatalism is the high value society places on having children.

Question 21

According to Belsky and Kelly,what percentage of couples experienced an improvement in their relationship with the birth of a child?

A) 85%
B) 62%
C) 40%
D) 19%

Question 22

Which of the following statements about assisted reproductive technologies is accurate?

A) These technologies have the potential to create legal dilemmas about the establishment of parental status.
B) The cost of these procedures has declined so sufficiently that they are now affordable for individuals of even modest economic resources.
C) Use of fertility drugs has had no significant impact on the rate of multiple births in the United States.
D) all of the above

Question 23

First born children,in comparison with later born children,

A) respond more to the influence of peers.
B) tend to be more achievement-oriented.
C) are more likely to remain childless in adulthood.
D) have a tendency to rebel against the values of their parents.

Question 24

What is meant by the term "boomerang generation"?

A) adult children who, after living on their own, move back home to live with their parents
B) the generation that follows the baby boom generation
C) adults who provide care for both their children and their aged parents
D) the large group of biracial children born over the past 20 years

Question 25

Booth and Amato's research on adult children of traditional and nontraditional parents found that

A) children of traditional parents were more likely to get married and to parent.
B) children of nontraditional parents were more likely to get married and to parent.
C) there were no differences in psychological well-being between these groups of children.
D) children of traditional parents had lower educational attainment.

Question 26

Surrogate mothering refers to

A) a woman who adopts a child and raises that child as her own.
B) a guardian who cares for a child born to an unprepared teenager.
C) a process by which the husbands sperm is used to impregnate a woman other than one's partner.
D) Godparents taking the role of deceased parents.

Question 27

According to the text's discussion of race and fertility,

A) Whites have higher fertility rates than Blacks.
B) Hispanics have the lowest fertility rate among U.S. racial groups.
C) the fact that racial minorities are disproportionately poor is related to their fertility.
D) people of color have pronatalist beliefs, but White individuals do not.

Question 28

Research finds married mothers

A) spend more total time with their children than single mothers.
B) spend more primary time with their children than single mothers.
C) with more economic resources spend less time with their children than those with fewer resources.
D) with preschool age children tend to spend less time with their children than those with older children.

Question 29

According to the text,childlessness is most often a source of stigma for

A) women.
B) men.
C) dual-career spouses.
D) all of the above

Question 30

Which of the following describes the typical division of labor in child rearing?

A) Mothers do most of the primary caretaking while fathers take major responsibility for arrangements such as doctor appointments.
B) Fathers and mothers share caretaking and other responsibilities nearly equally.
C) Mothers do most of the caretaking and are responsible for other arrangements as well.
D) none of the above

Question 31

Research on the effects of day care suggests that

A) children receiving quality care develop as normally and quickly as children who stay at home with their mother.
B) daycare children are more likely to become socially disruptive adults.
C) daycare children are low achievers upon entering school.
D) children raised at home have underdeveloped social skills.

Question 32

Bianchi,Robinson,and Milkie find that,compared with the last four decades,

A) parents are spending as much or more time interacting with their children.
B) parents are spending much less time interacting with their children.
C) fathers are spending less time and mothers are spending more time interacting with their children.
D) parents spend much more of their leisure time apart from their children.

Question 33

According to recent research,the percent of childless women

A) is correlated with the rising incidence of poverty.
B) has increased in recent years.
C) has declined in recent years.
D) depends primarily on conscious choices made before marriage.

Question 34

Recent theories of childhood draw which of the following conclusions about the parent-child relationship?

A) Children are "empty vessels" that parents shape according to contemporary norms of child rearing.
B) Parents are authority figures; therefore, children have little chance of shaping their parents.
C) Parents influence their children and children influence their parents.
D) Deterministic models of child rearing provide the best conceptualization of this process.

Question 35

Siblings

A) spend half as much time together as they spend with their parents.
B) have less influence on each other than peers.
C) who are older are likely to increase the chances of a younger sibling drinking or smoking.
D) all of the above

Question 36

Research on children in families with nontraditional gender roles finds

A) these children score significantly lower on measures of psychological well-being than children in traditional families.
B) educational attainment to be significantly lower than for children in traditional families.
C) the effects on children are not adverse.
D) these children are likely to be voluntarily childless as adults.

Question 37

The most common model for families with children in contemporary U.S.society is

A) a dual-earner family with children.
B) a single adult and dependent children.
C) a breadwinner husband, stay-at-home wife, and dependent children.
D) a multigenerational household.

Question 38

John and Jane Smith are a middle-income couple who became parents in 2005.According to U.S.government estimates,approximately how much will they spend to raise their child to the age of 17?

A) $50,000
B) $80,000
C) $227,000
D) $240,000

Question 39

Research on homosexual parenting concludes that

A) children with homosexual parents are as emotionally healthy as children raised by heterosexual parents.
B) children with homosexual parents tend to be low achievers in school.
C) children with lesbian parents have difficulty in establishing social relationships with men.
D) social scientists have not yet researched this subject.

Question 40

All of the following are benefits of parenthood except

A) a child may give the lives of parents meaning and purpose.
B) improved financial stability for all family members.
C) symbolic immortality.
D) enhanced status of parents among kin, colleagues, and the community.

Question 41

Dual-earner families and single-parent families frequently depend on paid daycare.What is known about how daycare affects children? Is the quality of care uniform in this society? Explain.

Question 42

What racial-ethnic group has the highest rate of births to unmarried women?

A) White
B) African American
C) Hispanic
D) Asian American

Question 43

Discuss the idea that children are "empty vessels" who are shaped by their parents' influence.
How do newer theories revise this conceptualization of the impact of parents on children?

Question 44

Single parents experience which of the following sources of strain?

A) responsibility overload
B) task overload
C) emotional overload
D) all of the above

Question 45

According to sociologist Cherlin,it is likely that the most detrimental aspect of father absence in single-parent families is

A) lack of a male presence.
B) lack of a disciplinarian.
C) lack of a masculine role model.
D) lack of a male income.

Question 46

Discuss the patterns for reaching a decision on voluntary childlessness that sociologists have identified among contemporary couples.

Question 47

The approximate percentage of families headed by a single parent is

A) 13%.
B) 25%.
C) 55%.
D) none of the above

Question 48

Several trends are cited in the text as factors contributing to the predominance of relatively small families in contemporary U.S.society.Discuss these trends and the consequences that small family size has for its members.

Question 49

Children from single-parent homes are more likely than children from intact homes to do which of the following?

A) have poor academic achievement
B) be involved in delinquent acts
C) drop out of school
D) all of the above

Question 50

How do the costs and benefits of having children differ between high and low socioeconomic status groups?

Question 51

Which of the following is not a reason that policy initiatives for government support of day care are controversial?

A) Some groups believe these would encourage mothers to join the workforce.
B) Some groups oppose any tax increase that would result from these initiatives.
C) Some groups oppose these initiatives because the U.S. is already doing more to support working parents than in any other industrial nation.
D) Disagreement exists as to whether such initiates should be implemented on the federal, state, or local level.