Steven L Nock
Biographic Data
| ID | 3632913 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven L Nock |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven L |
| FAMILY NAME | Nock |
| SIGNATURE | NOCK S L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Virginia |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 716 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Covenant Marriage and the Sanctification of Gendered Marital Roles
This study contributes to research on the deinstitutionalization of marriage and changing gender ideologies by focusing on a unique group of marriage innovators. With quantitative and qualitative data from the Marriage Matters project (1997-2004), this study used a symbolic interactionist perspective to compare covenant- and standard-married couples. Findings reveal that covenants are more traditional than standards across religious, marital, and…
Attitudes Toward Gay Marriage in States Undergoing Marriage Law Transformation
This study examines attitudes toward gay marriage within the context of concern over the weakening of heterosexual marriage. We use data from a three-state survey conducted in 1998 - 2000 and designed to explore attitudes toward marriage and divorce reform (N = 976). We find that women, Whites, and younger persons are more approving of gay marriage than men, Blacks, and older persons. Nonparents with cohabitation experience are most approving, wh…
Her” Marriage after the Revolutions
Recent social changes have made husbands’ emotional investments and wives’ perceptions of equity in the division of housework crucial for women's marital happiness. But wives are also happiest in their marriages when they share a strong normative commitment to lifelong marriage with their husbands and when their husbands take the lead in breadwinning. Thus our research suggests that elements of the new and the old promote marital happiness among …
Situated Fathering: A Focus on Physical and Social Spaces
What's Love Got To Do With It? Equality, Equity, Commitment and Women's Marital Quality
The companionate theory of marriage suggests that egalitarianism in practice and belief leads to higher marital quality for wives and higher levels of positive emotion work on the part of husbands. Our analysis of women's marital quality and men's marital emotion work provides little evidence in support of this theory. Rather, in examining women's marital quality and men's emotional investments in marriage, we find that dyadic commitment to insti…
Illustrations of family scholarship: Introduction to the special issue
Links between premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital quality, stability, and divorce: A comparison of covenant versus standard marriages
Special Reviewers
Setting the Clock Forward or Back: Covenant Marriage and the “Divorce Revolution
In 1997, Louisiana codified a new family form by becoming the first state to pass covenant marriage legislation. Soon after, Arizona and Arkansas followed suit. This act created two marriage types with substantially different marital and divorce provisions. In spring 1998, the authors conducted qualitative interviews with focus groups consisting of covenant married couples, feminist activists, and poor women living in public housing, examining th…
The Marriages of Equally Dependent Spouses
Marriages of equally dependent spouses (MEDS) are those in which each partner generates between 40% and 59% of the total family earnings. The author argues that such marriages will become increasingly common. Currently, about a fifth (22%) of all marriages are MEDS. This article shows that when marriages become MEDS, wives become less committed to the union although husbands do not. When marriages become MEDS, the odds of divorce also increase. S…
Marriage in Men's Lives
The problem with marriage
America's divorce problem
Marriage in Men's Lives
Marriage in Men’s Lives
There are two marriages in every marital union, his and hers. Men and women live in worlds that are organized around gender, and their marriages reflect differing realities. As life companions, they respond to each other; but they also respond to the cultural definitions of what it means to be a husband and a wife. What has fascinated social and behavioral scientists for several years, however, is not only that husbands' and wives' experiences ar…
The Culture of Surveillance: Discipline and Social Control in the United States
The Consequences of Premarital Fatherhood
This study which focuses on how marriage and cohabitation explain the socioeconomic effects of premarital fatherhood opens by reviewing the literature on premarital fatherhood. Particular emphasis is placed on the three approaches used to explain why men do not marry the mothers of their children (portraying young men as sexual predators; focusing on the structural aspects of marriage and employment markets that mitigate against marriage; and not…
Too Much Privacy
Americans enjoy vastly more privacy today than their ancestors did. When people are able to live large portions of their lives outside the watchful eye of others, there are few traditional bases for trust. In the place of intrusive methods of ensuring conformity that relied on family members and neighbors to closely monitor and supervise one another, new and more effective methods have arisen and will continue to arise. The underlying theme in th…
Turn-Taking as Rational Behavior
Spouse Preferences of Never-Married, Divorced, and Cohabiting Americans
This research demonstrates that mate-selection preferences are patterned according to men's and women's prior experiences with marriage, divorce, and cohabitation. Compared with men and women who have never divorced or cohabited, men and women who have experienced one or both of these events express consistently different references in their willingness to marry others with particular personal traits. The research was based on a national sample o…
Commitment and Dependency in Marriage
The persistence of marriage, like its dissolution, is the result of many factors. Research on the variables that contribute to persistence in marriage focuses on commitment, a term that is frequently used to describe individuals and relationships, yet one that is rarely defined and even less often researched. This article takes a small step toward filling that gap. The research reported here is an attempt to study commitment in marriage, especial…
The Costs of Privacy: Surveillance and Reputation in America
A Comparison of Marriages and Cohabiting Relationships
This research analyzes data from the National Survey of Families and Households to compare marriages and cohabiting relationships. It reveals several broad differences in the nature of the two types of relationships. Specifically, cohabitors were found to express lower levels of commitment to their relationships, to report lower levels of happiness with their relationships, and to have poorer relationships with parents than comparable married ind…
The influence of maternal employment on gender role attitudes of men and women
The Costs of Privacy: Surveillance and Reputation in America
Americans now enjoy vastly more privacy than in the past. But privacy makes it difficult to know much about other people; more privacy means more strangers. Costs of Privacy begins with these questions: How, in an anonymous society of strangers, is trust possible? What enables both individuals and institutional actors to trust others whom they have never met and do not know? Nock suggests an answer: that establishes reputations, and it is these w…
A Comparison of Marriages and Cohabiting Relationships
This research analyzes data from the National Survey of Families and Households to compare marriages and cohabiting relationships. It reveals several broad differences in the nature of the two types of relationships. Specifically, cohabitors were found to express lower levels of commitment to their relationships, to report lower levels of happiness with their relationships, and to have poorer relationships with parents than comparable married ind…
What's Love Got To Do With It? Equality, Equity, Commitment and Women's Marital Quality
The companionate theory of marriage suggests that egalitarianism in practice and belief leads to higher marital quality for wives and higher levels of positive emotion work on the part of husbands. Our analysis of women's marital quality and men's marital emotion work provides little evidence in support of this theory. Rather, in examining women's marital quality and men's emotional investments in marriage, we find that dyadic commitment to insti…
Time Together Among Dual-Earner Couples
This study examines the amount of time dual-earner couples spend together by analyzing time diaries (N= 177) from the 1981 Study of Time Use. We find that time together is substantially reduced by the number of hours couples work (combined) and how they schedule these hours. Sociocultural and life-cycle factors appear to have very limited net effects on time spent together. There is a theoretically predictable relationship between marital quality…
The Consequences of Premarital Fatherhood
This study which focuses on how marriage and cohabitation explain the socioeconomic effects of premarital fatherhood opens by reviewing the literature on premarital fatherhood. Particular emphasis is placed on the three approaches used to explain why men do not marry the mothers of their children (portraying young men as sexual predators; focusing on the structural aspects of marriage and employment markets that mitigate against marriage; and not…
Attitudes Toward Gay Marriage in States Undergoing Marriage Law Transformation
This study examines attitudes toward gay marriage within the context of concern over the weakening of heterosexual marriage. We use data from a three-state survey conducted in 1998 - 2000 and designed to explore attitudes toward marriage and divorce reform (N = 976). We find that women, Whites, and younger persons are more approving of gay marriage than men, Blacks, and older persons. Nonparents with cohabitation experience are most approving, wh…
The Marriages of Equally Dependent Spouses
Marriages of equally dependent spouses (MEDS) are those in which each partner generates between 40% and 59% of the total family earnings. The author argues that such marriages will become increasingly common. Currently, about a fifth (22%) of all marriages are MEDS. This article shows that when marriages become MEDS, wives become less committed to the union although husbands do not. When marriages become MEDS, the odds of divorce also increase. S…
Commitment and Dependency in Marriage
The persistence of marriage, like its dissolution, is the result of many factors. Research on the variables that contribute to persistence in marriage focuses on commitment, a term that is frequently used to describe individuals and relationships, yet one that is rarely defined and even less often researched. This article takes a small step toward filling that gap. The research reported here is an attempt to study commitment in marriage, especial…
Situated Fathering: A Focus on Physical and Social Spaces
Links between premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital quality, stability, and divorce: A comparison of covenant versus standard marriages
Time with Children: The Impact of Couples' Work-Time Commitments
Using detailed time diaries of a 1981 national sample of 226 married couples with children, we analyze the extent of the trade-off between their time commitments to work and time with their children. Parents in single-earner families spend substantially more time with children than their dual-earner counterparts; the overall difference is largely accounted for by the lesser time of employed mothers in activities that involve children only periphe…
The Family and Hierarchy
The Family Life Cycle: Empirical or Conceptual Tool
A number of issues related to individual and family life are studied as they vary across stages of the family life cycle. Strong relationships are found between stages in the family life cycle and a number of such issues. Further analysis which seeks to determine the manifest dimensions of the family life cycle indicates that the major empirically important dimensions qf the family life cycle are the presence qf children and length of marriage. F…
Ascription Versus Achievement in the Attribution of Family Social Status
The social standing of families in our society is the result of collective evaluations of certain characteristics of family members. The most important characteristics are known to be the occupational and educational attainments of both husband and wife. Beyond such achieved characteristics, there are many ascribed characteristics which have been presumed to have importance in the determination of a family's social standing. This paper presents t…
The influence of maternal employment on gender role attitudes of men and women
The Symbolic Meaning of Childbearing
Women born during the baby boom are predicted to have historically high rates of childlessness and low fertility. Many popular explanations for such predictions point to the costs involved in having and rearing children-both direct and opportunity costs. The evidence for such costs, however, is quite weak. In this article, the costs in earnings, labor-force time, and time with one's spouse are considered and argued to be inadequate to explain con…
Setting the Clock Forward or Back: Covenant Marriage and the “Divorce Revolution
In 1997, Louisiana codified a new family form by becoming the first state to pass covenant marriage legislation. Soon after, Arizona and Arkansas followed suit. This act created two marriage types with substantially different marital and divorce provisions. In spring 1998, the authors conducted qualitative interviews with focus groups consisting of covenant married couples, feminist activists, and poor women living in public housing, examining th…
Consequences of the Family Work Day
The paper analyzes how dimensions of the work are related to various aspects of the domestic lives of dual-earner couples. (The concept of the family work day directs attention to the combined number of hours that a couple works each day, as well as how the two separate schedules are related to each other.) Neither the combined number of hours a couple works nor the amount of time one or both spouses is working is strongly related to the quality …
Her” Marriage after the Revolutions
Recent social changes have made husbands’ emotional investments and wives’ perceptions of equity in the division of housework crucial for women's marital happiness. But wives are also happiest in their marriages when they share a strong normative commitment to lifelong marriage with their husbands and when their husbands take the lead in breadwinning. Thus our research suggests that elements of the new and the old promote marital happiness among …
Employee Ownership and Perceptions of Work: The Effect of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan
A substantial number of firms in the United States have recently installed employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). Little is known, however, about how such arrangements affect employees' attitudes about their jobs and companies. To address this issue, a small company was studied before and after the introduction of an ESOP. Employees' commitment to the organization and job satisfaction were higher after ESOP implementation, while perceived worker…
Enduring Effects of Marital Disruption and Subsequent Living Arrangements
This research examines the enduring effects of marital disruption and the subsequent living arrangements upon adolescents. A large national sample of adults (N = 8224) is examined to compare those living in each of eight types of disrupted families when they were 16 years old with a comparable group who were living with both biological parents at this age. Measures of interpersonal trust and confidence, anomie, and general satisfaction with aspec…
Family Life-Cycle Transitions: Longitudinal Effects on Family Members
This research sought to describe the individual consequences of six types of family transitions. Transitions into and out of marriage, (remarriage, divorce, widowhood, and first marriage) and changes in parental status (birth of first child in 10 years, birth of additional child in 5 years), were used as family transitions. Self assessments on 10 subjective aspects of life were considered as possible consequences of such transitions. A national s…
Household Types and Social Standing
Journal Article Household Types and Social Standing Get access Steven L. Nock, Steven L. Nock University of Virginia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Peter H. Rossi Peter H. Rossi University of Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 57, Issue 4, June 1979, Pages 1325–1345, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/57.4.1325 Published: 01 June 1979
Covenant Marriage and the Sanctification of Gendered Marital Roles
This study contributes to research on the deinstitutionalization of marriage and changing gender ideologies by focusing on a unique group of marriage innovators. With quantitative and qualitative data from the Marriage Matters project (1997-2004), this study used a symbolic interactionist perspective to compare covenant- and standard-married couples. Findings reveal that covenants are more traditional than standards across religious, marital, and…
The Family Work Day
To understand the difficulties working couples face in balancing their work and family lives, we argue that it is essential to consider the family work day, the pattern of work-time commitment for a family as a unit that results from the combination of two individual workday schedules. Based on national survey data, we present estimates of three dimensions of the family work day for a large subpopulation of working couples. These dimensions are: …
America's divorce problem
Ascription Versus Achievement in the Attribution of Family Social Status
The social standing of families in our society is the result of collective evaluations of certain characteristics of family members. The most important characteristics are known to be the occupational and educational attainments of both husband and wife. Beyond such achieved characteristics, there are many ascribed characteristics which have been presumed to have importance in the determination of a family's social standing. This paper presents t…
The Family Life Cycle: Empirical or Conceptual Tool
A number of issues related to individual and family life are studied as they vary across stages of the family life cycle. Strong relationships are found between stages in the family life cycle and a number of such issues. Further analysis which seeks to determine the manifest dimensions of the family life cycle indicates that the major empirically important dimensions qf the family life cycle are the presence qf children and length of marriage. F…
Three Blind Mice: Misleading Criticisms of the "Family Life Cycle" Concept
Household Types and Social Standing
Journal Article Household Types and Social Standing Get access Steven L. Nock, Steven L. Nock University of Virginia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Peter H. Rossi Peter H. Rossi University of Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 57, Issue 4, June 1979, Pages 1325–1345, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/57.4.1325 Published: 01 June 1979
Determinants of Police Job Satisfaction
This paper reports the results of a partial replication and extension of Reiss's (1967) study of police job satisfaction. Utilizing indicators similar to those employed by Reiss, the study first determines the applicability of his results to a second sample of police officers at a more recent time. Second, it explores two new variables potentially related to job satisfaction: years on the force and years in current rank. Third, it employs multipl…
Social Class and the Quality of Work Life in Public and Private Organizations
The conventional wisdom of organizational theory regards public and private bureaucracies as analytically equivalent “complex organizations.” This article challenges the conventional wisdom. Our research compares public and private sector workers' perceptions of the character and quality of their work life. Public and private sector workers perceive and evaluate their jobs in substantially different ways. Blue collar workers in the public sector …
Rejoinder to Baker
Consensus and Dissensus in the Attribution of Status and Equity: Comment on Nock and Rossi and on Alves and Rossi
Family Life-Cycle Transitions: Longitudinal Effects on Family Members
This research sought to describe the individual consequences of six types of family transitions. Transitions into and out of marriage, (remarriage, divorce, widowhood, and first marriage) and changes in parental status (birth of first child in 10 years, birth of additional child in 5 years), were used as family transitions. Self assessments on 10 subjective aspects of life were considered as possible consequences of such transitions. A national s…
Social Advantage and Attitudes toward Women's Roles
Measurement in the Social Sciences: The Link Between Theory and Data
Enduring Effects of Marital Disruption and Subsequent Living Arrangements
This research examines the enduring effects of marital disruption and the subsequent living arrangements upon adolescents. A large national sample of adults (N = 8224) is examined to compare those living in each of eight types of disrupted families when they were 16 years old with a comparable group who were living with both biological parents at this age. Measures of interpersonal trust and confidence, anomie, and general satisfaction with aspec…
The Survey Method: The Contribution of Surveys to Sociological Explanation
Measuring Social Judgments: The Factorial Survey Approach
Assign this book in a graduate social psychology methods course. It deserves to be read by social psychologists, and the factorial survey technique should be fully integrated into the tool kit of those who go on to practice policy-relevant research...The Rossi-Nock volume is a quite important work as it stands, and future developments will make it even more important.' -- Contemporary Psychology, Vol 28 No 6, 1983 'Measuring Social Judgments prov…
The Family Work Day
To understand the difficulties working couples face in balancing their work and family lives, we argue that it is essential to consider the family work day, the pattern of work-time commitment for a family as a unit that results from the combination of two individual workday schedules. Based on national survey data, we present estimates of three dimensions of the family work day for a large subpopulation of working couples. These dimensions are: …
The Gender Factory: The Apportionment of Work in American Households
1. Conceptualizing the Division of Household Labor.- Who Does What: Some Empirical Generalizations.- Traditional Conceptual Frameworks: Two Examples.- The New Home Economics: Reluctant Materialism.- An Overview of the Analysis.- 2. Measuring Household and Market Labors.- and Background.- The Measurement of Household Labor.- The Measurement of Market Labor Time.- Household and Market Work: Endogenous Variables.- 3. Sample Characteristics and Initi…
Consequences of the Family Work Day
The paper analyzes how dimensions of the work are related to various aspects of the domestic lives of dual-earner couples. (The concept of the family work day directs attention to the combined number of hours that a couple works each day, as well as how the two separate schedules are related to each other.) Neither the combined number of hours a couple works nor the amount of time one or both spouses is working is strongly related to the quality …
Time Together Among Dual-Earner Couples
This study examines the amount of time dual-earner couples spend together by analyzing time diaries (N= 177) from the 1981 Study of Time Use. We find that time together is substantially reduced by the number of hours couples work (combined) and how they schedule these hours. Sociocultural and life-cycle factors appear to have very limited net effects on time spent together. There is a theoretically predictable relationship between marital quality…
The Symbolic Meaning of Childbearing
Women born during the baby boom are predicted to have historically high rates of childlessness and low fertility. Many popular explanations for such predictions point to the costs involved in having and rearing children-both direct and opportunity costs. The evidence for such costs, however, is quite weak. In this article, the costs in earnings, labor-force time, and time with one's spouse are considered and argued to be inadequate to explain con…
The Family and Hierarchy
Time with Children: The Impact of Couples' Work-Time Commitments
Using detailed time diaries of a 1981 national sample of 226 married couples with children, we analyze the extent of the trade-off between their time commitments to work and time with their children. Parents in single-earner families spend substantially more time with children than their dual-earner counterparts; the overall difference is largely accounted for by the lesser time of employed mothers in activities that involve children only periphe…
The Separation of Sex, Gestation, and Genetics from Parenthood
The demographic trends of post-war Western industrial democracies have presented family sociologists with many of their most vexing problems. First was the unexpected and dramatic rise in fertility following on the heels of World War II
Religion as a mediating force in the effects of modernization on parent‐child relations in Jordan
This article seeks to explore the effects of moderization, especially the role of religion in the modernization process, on the status of children in the Jordanian family. Since Islam is the religion of the overwhelming majority of the population in Jordan, our analysis is concerned with Islam and its influence in moderating the modernizing process in interfamily relationships. Specifically, this article suggests that the Muslim faith acts to con…
Employee Ownership and Perceptions of Work: The Effect of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan
A substantial number of firms in the United States have recently installed employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). Little is known, however, about how such arrangements affect employees' attitudes about their jobs and companies. To address this issue, a small company was studied before and after the introduction of an ESOP. Employees' commitment to the organization and job satisfaction were higher after ESOP implementation, while perceived worker…
Dynamics of Family Development: A Theoretical Perspective
Sociology (42 works) · Psychology (35 works) · Social Psychology (26 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (23 works) · Political science (22 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Economics (14 works) · Demography (13 works) · Gender Studies (13 works)