Citation

Burgess RL. Hum. Nat. 1994; 5(2): 203-221.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1994, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/BF02692161

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Increasing numbers of young mothers in the work force, more and more children requiring extrafamilial care, high rates of divorce, lower rates of remarriage, increasing numbers of female-headed households, growing numbers of zero-parent families, and significant occurrences of child maltreatment are just some of the social indicators indicative of the family in a changing world. These trends and their consequences for children are described and then examined from the perspectives of microeconomic theory, the relative-income hypothesis, sex-ratio theory, and one form of modernization theory. The paper concludes with a preliminary examination of the added explanatory power provided by evolutionary theory.

Language: en