Social change and preferences for gender of children among women in Taiwan.

This dissertation studies the impact of the emerging nonfamilial mode of social organization on women's gender preference and expectations for resource flows from sons, daughters, and non-child sources in Taiwan. This study elaborates and tests derivative hypotheses of the theoretical framework, integrating the mode of social organization and life course perspectives. The concept of resource flows examined in this study broadly includes the streams of wealth flowing from children, financial supports in old age from child- and nonchild-sources, and coresident companionship provided by married children. Gender preference is exclusively measured by the Coombs IS scale. Data from the 1986 KAP survey indicate that women's low expectations for resource flows from married daughters remains unchanged across cohorts over a 30-year time span. Nevertheless, women's expectations for upward resource flows from unmarried daughters and sons--particularly married sons--decline substantially, while their expectations for reliance on non-child resources increase significantly. The analysis of multivariate logistic regression demonstrates that individual early life experiences in nonfamilial organizations--including schooling, working outside the family before marriage, and forming the family in an autonomous way--are important for changes in women's expectations. The results also show that cohort differences in expectations are mostly attributable to change in women's nonfamilial experiences. I examine the impact of social change on gender preference by pooling data from 1973, 1980, and 1986 Taiwan KAP surveys. The analyses first examine a micro-level model which again illustrates that the cohort trend in son preference is a function of changes in individuals' early experiences in nonfamilial organizations across time. Then the analyses turn to a hierarchical linear model to simultaneously estimate the influence of individual and community measures for the level of familial mode of organizations with the assumption that a community period trend in son preference is a function of community socioeconomic attributes. The results indicate that the individual's life-course experiences and community's regional location, proximity to a big city, and school enrollment rate have a net influence on son preference; additionally, a large proportion of the variation in community period trends is due to the community differences in regional location, female employment, and fertility control. To conclude, social change towards the nonfamilial mode of social organization reduces expectations for upward resource flows from male children and promotes a more balanced gender preference.Ph.D.Cultural anthropologyIndividual and family studiesSocial SciencesSocial structureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129663/2/9542987.pd