Arthur L Greil
Biographic Data
| ID | 104713 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Arthur L Greil |
| GIVEN NAMES | Arthur L |
| FAMILY NAME | Greil |
| SIGNATURE | GREIL A L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Alfred University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3101-0055 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 90 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 586 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 90 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Delayed childbearing and reproductive justice
Contemporary women delay childbearing because achieving the normative prerequisites takes longer than previously due to structural changes such as increasing educational requirements for jobs, rising housing costs and growing employment precarity. Policymakers tend to be concerned about delayed reproduction because of its presumed link with lower completed fertility and potential economic consequences. From a humanistic perspective, a more fundam…
Perceptions of infertility: The roles of age, knowledge, and motivated reasoning
Demographic studies of significant reproductive outcomes, such as infertility and unintended pregnancy, often use measures of perceived infertility, but there are varied understandings and conceptualizations of perceived infertility across studies. Some researchers appear to assume that perceived infertility is consistent with medically defined infertility and implicitly use it as a proxy for medically defined infertility, whereas other researche…
Social Disparities Across Different Stages of Medical Help‐Seeking to Have a Child in Germany
Delayed childbearing has led more individuals and couples to seek medical help for conception in many European countries. In accordance with a stratified reproduction perspective, there is evidence of social disparities concerning who seeks medical help to become pregnant. However, it remains unclear whether and how disparities vary across different stages of the help‐seeking process. This article provides novel evidence on the degree of disparit…
Socioeconomic and Racial/Ethnic Inequalities in Infertility Prevalence, Help-Seeking, and Help Received Since 1995
Self-Perceived Infertility is Not Always Associated with Having Fewer Children: Evidence from German Panel Data
Proximate determinants theory considers infertility rates a risk factor for lower fertility rates, but the assumption that people who perceive infertility will have fewer children has not been tested. This study investigates the association of self-perceived infertility with the number of children people have had after 11 years. Infertility implies reduced chances of conception (rather than sterility), but people do not always consistently percei…
Confidence in Pregnancy Among U.S. Women
Researchers often ask women about pregnancy intentions but seldom ask how confident women are that they will be able to become pregnant when they desire. We argue that beliefs about fertility and infertility may function as justifications for behaviors to which one is already committed. Thus, women who have delayed childbearing but who intend to become pregnant may express confidence in their ability to become pregnant, even in the face of dimini…
Social and Emotional Loneliness: Their Relationship to Multiple Domains of Cognition in Later Life
Despite the fact that the literature suggests loneliness to undermine cognitive functioning in later life, no work has simultaneously examined the relationships between these constructs taking a multidimensional approach to the assessment of each. The present study explored relationships among social and emotional loneliness and both general crystallized (Gc) and general fluid (Gf) ability, as well as to several indices of everyday intellectual f…
Prospective Attitude about the Importance of Planning Pregnancies Is Associated with Retrospective Attitude toward a Specific Pregnancy
Several theories of fertility behavior assume that planning is important to women. Is this a reasonable assumption? To answer this question, the authors used the National Survey of Fertility Barriers. Among women with unsure or positive fertility intentions at wave 1, most (75 percent) agreed with the statement “It is important to plan my pregnancies.” Logistic regression, adjusted for control variables, indicated that fertility intentions are a …
Bearing the Reproductive Load? Unequal Reproductive Careers Among U.S. Women
Fertility Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Developed Countries – On Pre-pandemic Fertility Forecasts
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all areas of our lives. Among other outcomes, the academic literature and popular media both discuss the potential effects of the pandemic on fertility. As fertility is an important determinant of population development and population forecasts are important for policy decisions and planning, we need to address to which extent fertility forecasts performed before the pandemic still apply. Using Monte Carlo forec…
Reproductive Regrets among a Population-Based Sample of U.S. Women
Women have many reproductive options, but little is known about their regrets regarding prior reproductive choices and outcomes. Guided by the life-course and stratified reproduction perspectives, this study draws on an open-ended question about reproductive regrets from wave I of the National Survey of Fertility Barriers, a representative telephone survey of reproductive aged U.S. women conducted from 2004 to 2006. The authors classified regrets…
Changes in Importance of Motherhood Following Pregnancy Loss
Pregnancy loss (i.e., miscarriage, stillbirth) is a relatively common and often traumatic experience. Although prior research has examined mental health consequences of pregnancy loss, to our knowledge, none have examined how the experience of pregnancy loss affects how women perceive or value the importance of motherhood. Using longitudinal data from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers, we applied change-score regression analysis to examin…
Factors associated with medical help-seeking for infertility in developed countries: A narrative review of recent literature
From generalist to specialist: A qualitative study of the perceptions of infertility patients
Is perceived inability to procreate associated with life satisfaction? Evidence from a German panel study
Most studies of the psychosocial consequences of infertility have focused on those who seek medical treatment, leaving a research gap regarding the psychosocial consequences of perceived inability to procreate in the general population. Moreover, most studies are cross-sectional and the results are thus likely affected by omitted variable bias. Inspired by aspects of the Theory of Conjunctural Action , this study analysed 10 waves of data from th…
Is Reproductive Orientation Associated with Sexual Satisfaction Among Partnered U.S. Women
Is a dyadic stressor experienced as equally distressing by both partners? The case of perceived fertility problems
Using data from a population survey, this article explores whether perceptions of having a fertility problem among 926 U.S. couples in heterosexual relationships (women aged 25-45 and male partners) are associated with distress. Most couples did not perceive a fertility problem (58%). In almost a third (30%) of the couples, only women perceived a fertility problem; in 4%, only the men; and in nearly a fifth (19%), both perceived a problem. Adjust…
Mutual Influence? Gender, Partner Pregnancy Desires, Fertility Intentions, and Birth Outcomes in U.S. Heterosexual Couples
Competing hypotheses exist with regard to how men’s and women’s pregnancy desires and intentions are associated with births among contemporary heterosexual couples. There are compelling cultural and structural reasons to support either the hypothesis that men’s desires and intentions (patriarchal) or that women’s desires and intentions (matriarchal) will have more influence, or that both partner’s desires and intentions will be associated with bi…
Does Self-Identifying as Having a Health Problem Precede Medical Contact? The Case of Infertility
Studies of medical help-seeking presume that self-identifying as having a health problem precedes medical contact, but this ordering of the identity-behavior relationship has not been systematically examined. We used longitudinal data from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers (2004 to 2010) on 412 women with infertility to document the temporal relationship between self-identifying as having a fertility problem and making medical contact. Th…
Infertility and Self-identification: The Indeterminacy of the Illness-self Relationship
Nearly one-third to one-half of U.S. women meets the medical criteria for infertility at some point in their reproductive lives. Yet many do not view lack of conception as problematic. Why might some women self-identify as having a fertility problem but others do not? Using two waves of the National Survey of Fertility Barriers, we conducted binary and longitudinal multinomial logistic regression to answer this question. Results suggest that only…
Stability and Change in Motherhood Status and Fertility Problem Identification: Implications for Changes in Self-Esteem
Because motherhood is a valued status, the life course perspective and the theory of conjunctural action suggest the following hypotheses: for women in the United States, gaining the valued identity 'mother' should lead to an increase in self-esteem, while identification with a fertility problem identity should lead to a decrease in self-esteem. Using the nationally representative two-wave National Survey of Fertility Barriers (NSFB), we conducte…
Degrees of Medicalization: The Case of Infertility Health-Seeking
We examine responses to infertility among a sample of 2,361 women with infertility from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers. Latent class analysis uncovered seven latent classes of behavioral response which can be arranged in a rough continuum from least medicalized to most medicalized response. We then aggregated these seven categories into three schemas representing various degrees of medicalization. Women in each class combine treatment-…
Partner congruence on fertility intentions and values: Implications for birth outcomes
In heterosexual couples, both partners' intentions to have a baby (or not) are associated with the likelihood of a subsequent birth, yet most studies only measure women's intentions. Therefore, little is known about the potential association of couple agreement or disagreement on intentions or on such values as importance of parenthood, career, and leisure and the implications for childbearing. The goal of this article is to assess whether couple…
Change in Motherhood Status and Fertility Problem Identification: Implications for Changes in Life Satisfaction
ObjectiveTo determine whether the association between changes in life satisfaction and becoming a mother (or not) depends on fertility problem identification status.BackgroundEvidence and symbolic interactionist theory suggest that, for women who initially perceive a fertility barrier, gaining the valued identity "mother" should be associated with increases and continuing to face a blocked goal (i.e., not becoming a mother) should be associated w…
Fertility and Infertility: Toward an Integrative Research Agenda
The Importance of Motherhood Among Women in the Contemporary United States
We contribute to feminist and gender scholarship on cultural notions of motherhood by analyzing the importance of motherhood among mothers and non-mothers. Using a national probability sample (N = 2,519) of U.S. women ages 25-45, we find a continuous distribution of scores measuring perceptions of the importance of motherhood among both groups. Employing OLS multiple regression, we examine why some women place more importance on motherhood, focus…
Conversion to the world view of Alcoholics Anonymous: A refinement of conversion theory
Frustrated Fertility: Infertility and Psychological Distress Among Women
Using a random sample of 580 Midwestern women, we test the hypothesis that women who have experienced infertility report higher psychological distress. Approximately one third of our sample reports having experienced infertility sometime in their lives, although the majority of the infertile now have biological children. Drawing hypotheses from identity and stress theories, we examine whether roles or resources condition the effects of infertilit…
The Social Construction of Infertility
Health and illness are not objective states but socially constructed categories. We focus here on infertility, a phenomenon that has shifted from being seen as a private problem of couples to being seen as a medical condition. Studying infertility provides an ideal vantage point from which to study such features of health care as inter‐societal and cross‐cultural disparities in health care, the relationship between identity and health, gender rol…
Infertility: His and Hers
Using qualitative data based on interviews with 22 married infertile couples living in western New York State, we describe the ways in which husbands and wives interact in the process of constructing their infertility. The wives experienced infertility as a cataclysmic role failure. Husbands tended to see infertility as a disconcerting event but not as a tragedy. Couples tended to see infertility as a problem for wives. Frustration and lack of co…
Characters in Search of a Script: The Exit Narratives of Formerly Ultra-Orthodox Jews
We use a case study of individuals who leave ultra-Orthodox Judaism to illustrate that essential characteristics of the institutions they leave, such as their degree of encapsulation, shape both processes and narratives of identity change. Through examining the narratives of these exiters and comparing them to the literature on conversion into strict religious groups, we find that there is more institutional support for conversion into a group th…
Social Cocoons: Encapsulation and Identity Transformation Organizations
The transformation of personal identities is an implicit or explicit goal of many organizations, including 'new' religious movements, self-help groups, 'deprogramming' enterprises, rehabilitation programs, and others. This essay describes and accounts for one important structural feature of identity transformation organizations (ITOs): encapsulation. Three types of encapsulation are described-physical, social, and ideological-and reasons why diff…
Race-Ethnicity and Medical Services for Infertility: Stratified Reproduction in a Population-based Sample of U.S. Women
Evidence of group differences in reproductive control and access to reproductive health care suggests the continued existence of 'stratified reproduction' in the United States. Women of color are overrepresented among people with infertility but are underrepresented among those who receive medical services. The authors employ path analysis to uncover mechanisms accounting for these differences among black, Hispanic, Asian, and non-Hispanic white …
Infertility: Testing a helpseeking model
Infertility treatment and fertility-specific distress: A longitudinal analysis of a population-based sample of U.S. women
The Importance of Motherhood and Fertility Intentions among U.S. Women
Fertility intentions are associated with achieved fertility; therefore, understanding the factors associated with fertility intentions is important. Considerable research has examined factors associated with fertility intentions, but no one has explored the importance of motherhood to women. Guided by life course and identity theories, we use the National Survey of Fertility Barriers, a data set collected from a random sample of U.S. women aged 2…
"Trying" Times: Medicalization, Intent, and Ambiguity in the Definition of Infertility
Researchers studying infertility from the perspective of anthropology and other the social sciences seldom examine the assumptions embedded in the biomedical definition of infertility. Implicit in the biomedical definition is the assumption that people can be divided straightforwardly into those who are trying to conceive and those who are not trying to conceive. If being infertile implies "intent to conceive," we must recognize that there are va…
Islamic Da'wah in the West: Muslim Missionary Activity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam
Does the Reason Matter? Variations in Childlessness Concerns Among U.S. Women
Does the reason why women have no children matter with regard to level of childlessness concerns? Reasons include biomedical barriers, situational barriers, delaying motherhood, and choosing to be childfree. The concept of “childlessness concerns” captures the idea that holidays and family gatherings are difficult because of not having children or feeling left out or sad that others have children. Life course and identity theories guided the stru…
Infertility and Life Satisfaction Among Women
Using data from a random sample of 580 midwestern women, the authors explore the association between lifetime infertility and life satisfaction. Past research shows lower life satisfaction among those seeking help for infertility. The authors find no direct effects of lifetime infertility, regardless of perception of a problem, on life satisfaction; however, there are several conditional effects. Among women who have ever met the criteria for inf…
Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism: Triumph over Evil
Partner congruence on fertility intentions and values: Implications for birth outcomes
In heterosexual couples, both partners' intentions to have a baby (or not) are associated with the likelihood of a subsequent birth, yet most studies only measure women's intentions. Therefore, little is known about the potential association of couple agreement or disagreement on intentions or on such values as importance of parenthood, career, and leisure and the implications for childbearing. The goal of this article is to assess whether couple…
Fertility and Infertility: Toward an Integrative Research Agenda
Surgical sterilization, regret, and race: Contemporary patterns
Infertility and fertility intentions, desires, and outcomes among US women
Little is known about how the experience of infertility or identification as someone with infertility shapes womenâ s fertility intentions, desires, or birth outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to help fill this gap in knowledge for fertility-intentions
What Have We Learned from Process Models of Conversion? An Examination of Ten Case Studies
Many attempts to understand the conversion process have been guided by Lofland and Stark's (1965) "process-mode." We examine ten case studies of the conversion process in diverse groups in order to specify the conditions under which the Lofland-Stark model applies. Several components of the model are rejected for conceptual reasons. Other components are to be found in some types of groups but not in others. Only "formation of affective bonds with…
Gender and the Experience of Conversion: The Case of 'Returnees' to Modern Orthodox Judaism
Journal Article Gender and the Experience of Conversion: The Case of "Returnees" to Modern Orthodox Judaism Get access Lynn Davidman, Lynn Davidman Brown University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Arthur L. Greil Arthur L. Greil Alfred University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 54, Issue 1, Spring 1993, Pages 83–100, https://doi.org/10.…
Taking the Pledge: The Commitment Process in Alcoholics Anonymous
Drawing from the writings of Becker, Kanter and others, an investment model of the process of commitment to an organization is developed. The commitment process can be described as a funnel wherein commitment demands are gradually escalated as people invest more and more of their resources in the line of action sponsored by the organization. The utility of this model is illustrated through an analysis, based on observational data, of the commitme…
Degrees of Medicalization: The Case of Infertility Health-Seeking
We examine responses to infertility among a sample of 2,361 women with infertility from the National Survey of Fertility Barriers. Latent class analysis uncovered seven latent classes of behavioral response which can be arranged in a rough continuum from least medicalized to most medicalized response. We then aggregated these seven categories into three schemas representing various degrees of medicalization. Women in each class combine treatment-…
Just because a doctor says something, doesn't mean that [it] will happen: Self-perception as having a Fertility Problem among Infertility Patients
Only some individuals who have the medically defined condition 'infertility' adopt a self-definition as having a fertility problem, which has implications for social and behavioural responses, yet there is no clear consensus on why some people and not others adopt a medical label. We use interview data from 28 women and men who sought medical infertility treatment to understand variations in self-identification. Results highlight the importance o…
The Modernization of Consciousness and the Appeal of Fascism
What Does it Mean When I Call You A Fascist: A Reply to Gregor and Joes and a Comment on Conceptual Clarity
Previous Dispositions and Conversion to Perspectives of Social and Religious Movements
In this paper, testable propositions are developed regarding the conditions under which an individual's previous dispositions may be expected to play a greater or lesser role in the process of conversion to the perspectives of social and religious movements. It is then argued that most situations in which cases of conversion are to be found are such that the role played by previous dispositions will be relatively great. It is therefore suggested …
The Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion, Vol 2/1978
Georges Sorel and the Sociology of Virtue
Social Theory as Revolutionary Virtue
Religious Sectarianism and the Soviet State the Dynamics of Believer Protest and Regime Response
David Kowalewski, Arthur L. Greil, Religious Sectarianism and the Soviet State the Dynamics of Believer Protest and Regime Response, Review of Religious Research, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Mar., 1983), pp. 245-260
Conversion to the world view of Alcoholics Anonymous: A refinement of conversion theory
New Religious Movements: A Perspective for Understanding Society
Georges Sorel and the Sociology of Virtue
What Have We Learned from Process Models of Conversion? An Examination of Ten Case Studies
Many attempts to understand the conversion process have been guided by Lofland and Stark's (1965) "process-mode." We examine ten case studies of the conversion process in diverse groups in order to specify the conditions under which the Lofland-Stark model applies. Several components of the model are rejected for conceptual reasons. Other components are to be found in some types of groups but not in others. Only "formation of affective bonds with…
Social Cocoons: Encapsulation and Identity Transformation Organizations
The transformation of personal identities is an implicit or explicit goal of many organizations, including 'new' religious movements, self-help groups, 'deprogramming' enterprises, rehabilitation programs, and others. This essay describes and accounts for one important structural feature of identity transformation organizations (ITOs): encapsulation. Three types of encapsulation are described-physical, social, and ideological-and reasons why diff…
Ecumenism, Soviet-Dissident Style
While a good deal of research has focused on religious ecumenical movements in Western societies, far less attention has been devoted to ecumenism in non-Western contexts. Whereas religious groups in the West are generally free to pursue cooperation with other religious bodies, those operating in more repressive contexts face an additional challenge. In officially atheistic polities, the state plays an important role in shaping the character of e…
Lessons at the Bottom: Worker Nonparticipation in Labor Management Committees as Situational Adjustment
Nonparticipation is the modal response of workers to worker participation schemes. Four case studies are analyzed to demonstrate how situational and role constraints in organizations make this the most practical adjustment. Organizational settings are viewed as socializing contexts that teach workers what is expected, what is valued, and what actually pays off. Lessons leading to nonparticipation include (1) 'You're on the outside'; (2) 'Don't lo…
Taking the Pledge: The Commitment Process in Alcoholics Anonymous
Drawing from the writings of Becker, Kanter and others, an investment model of the process of commitment to an organization is developed. The commitment process can be described as a funnel wherein commitment demands are gradually escalated as people invest more and more of their resources in the line of action sponsored by the organization. The utility of this model is illustrated through an analysis, based on observational data, of the commitme…
Georges Sorel and the Sociology of Virtue
Church-State Relations in Russia and Nicaragua: Early Revolutionary Years
This essay compares church-state relations in Russia immediately after the Bolshevik revolution to church-state relations following the Nicaraguan revolution. Although conflict between church and state is perhaps inevitable under revolutionary socialist regimes, tension was much greater in the Russian case. Variations in church-state relationships in the two societies can be traced to differences in religious institutions and to differences in th…
Infertility: His and Hers
Using qualitative data based on interviews with 22 married infertile couples living in western New York State, we describe the ways in which husbands and wives interact in the process of constructing their infertility. The wives experienced infertility as a cataclysmic role failure. Husbands tended to see infertility as a disconcerting event but not as a tragedy. Couples tended to see infertility as a problem for wives. Frustration and lack of co…
Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Religious Organization: Meditations on Marginality
Analogies between the stTuCture, activities, dynamics, and ideology of A.A. and those of religious organizations areapparent, but A.A. literature and A.A. members deny that A.A. is a religious organization. Based on a reviewof A.A. literature on A.A. and on participant observation research, we argue thatboththe religious features of A.A. and thedenial of A.A. 's religious natureare integral to the stTuCture and functioning of the organization. Cl…
Death Experience and Religion
There has been much speculation about death experience's impact on people's religious orientations and behavior. The most common hypothesis linking the religious domain with death experience has it that death experience leads to greater religiosity as one way for people to gain comfort. Data from the 1984 National Opinion Research Center (NORC) General Social Survey are used to test this expectation. Results suggest that death experience is relat…
Religion as Opiate: Church and Revolution in Comparative Structural Perspective
David Kowalewski, Arthur L. Greil; Religion as Opiate: Church and Revolution in Comparative Structural Perspective, Journal of Church and State, Volume 32
Ecumenical Perspectives on Church and State: Protestant, Catholic and Jewish
Purity and Pollution in Zoroastrianism: Triumph over Evil
Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies
The Social Dimensions of Sectarianism: Sects and New Religious Movements in Contemporary Society
Sociology (60 works) · Psychology (53 works) · Reproductive Health and Technologies (47 works) · Fertility (37 works) · Population (37 works) · Social Psychology (35 works) · Pregnancy (33 works) · Demography (32 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (32 works) · Medicine (32 works)