Placing Families in Context: Challenges for Cross‐National Family Research

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12152
• Date: 01 February 2015
• Author: Wei‐hsin Yu
• Published date: 01 February 2015

W- Y University of Maryland, College Park

Placing Families in Context: Challenges for

Cross-National Family Research

Cross-national comparisons constitute a valu-

able strategy to assess how broader cultural,

political, and institutional contexts shape

family outcomes. One typical approach of

cross-national family research is to use compa-

rable data from a limited number of countries,

t similar regression models for each country,

and compare results across country-specic

models. Researchers increasingly are adopting

a second approach, whichrequires merging data

from many more societies and testing multilevel

models using the pooled sample. Although the

second approach has the advantage of allowing

direct estimates of the effects of nation-level

characteristics, it is more likely to suffer from

the problems of omitted-variable bias, inu-

ential cases, and measurement and construct

nonequivalence. The author discusses ways

to improve the rst approach’s ability to infer

macro-level inuences as well as how to deal

with challenges associated with the second one.

She also suggests choosing analytical strategies

according to whether the data meet multilevel

models’ assumptions.

Social scientists have long viewedcross-national

comparisons as a valuable method to both assess

the generalizability of ndings derived from

single-country studies and demonstrate the

inuences of broader contexts (Elder, 1976;

Kohn, 1987). Because welfare policies, cultural

norms, and social expectations and support

Department of Sociology and Maryland Population

Research Center, University of Maryland, CollegePark,

MD 20742-1315 (whyu1@umd.edu).

Key Words: cross-cultural issues, family policies, family

research, research methodologies, international.

for different members of each society are all

likely to shape family processes and outcomes

(Cooke & Baxter, 2010; Gornick, Meyers, &

Ross, 1998; Heuveline & Timberlake, 2004;

Ono, 2003; Park, 2007; Pong, Dronkers, &

Hampden-Thompson, 2003; Villarreal & Shin,

2008), a cross-national comparative framework

is especially useful for family research. With

the rising availability of comparable survey

data across countries and statistical methods for

analyzing such data, studies of family issues

are increasingly extending their scope to multi-

national settings and focusing on macro-level

inuences (e.g., Breen & Cooke, 2005; Craig

& Mullan, 2011; Kalmijn, 2013; Sullivan,

Coltrane, McAnnally, & Altintas, 2009; Treas,

Van der Lippe, & Tai, 2011; Yodanis & Lauer,

2007; Yu, 2005).

Despite improvements of both data and meth-

ods, cross-national family researchers continue

to face challenges, in part because the macro-

level forces used to explain cross-national

differences in certain outcomes are typically

difcult to measure and in part because there

often are many other between-country dif-

ferences that could affect the interpretations

of ndings. In some ways, the challenges for

cross-national family research are only becom-

ing greater, because researchers are less and less

likely to conne their interest to systematically

describing a particular set of countries. Instead,

cross-national family research increasingly

aims to develop general arguments about how

society-level characteristics condition family

processes, treating the specic countries exam-

ined merely as contexts or units of its analyses

(e.g., Kalmijn, 2013; Yodanis & Lauer, 2007).

When attempting to establish macro–micro rela-

tionships that are generalizable to a wide range

Journal of Marriage and Family 77 (February 2015): 23–39 23

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12152

24 Journal of Marriage and Family

of countries, it is even more important to ensure

that each measured family condition has the

same meaning across countries and that expla-

nations for observed macro–micro relationships

are not confounded by other factors that differ

across societies, such as the potentially differing

processes through which people of different

countries sort themselves into various types of

families.

In this article I discuss the challenges that

cross-national family researchers frequently

encounter and propose ways of dealing with

these challenges. I limit the discussion to

research that uses data from multiple countries

and features explicit and systematic comparisons

between countries. Although many studies based

on a single country are implicitly comparative,

given that they frequently relate their ndings

to ones from other countries (e.g., Villarreal

& Shin, 2008; Yu & Su, 2006), I exclude such

studies because the methodological require-

ments for the comparisons in which they engage

are considerably fewer than those for explicit

cross-national research. Moreover, to enable a

more focused discussion, I mainly address issues

related to quantitative cross-national research.

Needless to say, qualitative research comparing

multiple countries also faces methodological

challenges, given that researchers must have a

comprehensive understanding of the languages

and cultural differences involved. The chal-

lenges, however, tend to differ from those per-

taining to quantitative cross-national analyses.

A F I W

C-N C

Before considering the methodological chal-

lenges for cross-national family research, it

is important to address how and why family

studies use international comparisons as an

analytical strategy. One main reason family

scholars employ cross-national comparisons

is to uncover how macro-level social forces

shape family processes. Much previous research

suggests that nation-level factors play crucial

roles in explaining variations in family-related

outcomes (Cooke & Baxter, 2010). With regard

to the likelihood to cohabit, for instance, the

differences between subgroups within any

given country in Europe are small compared

to cross-national differences (Heuveline &

Timberlake, 2004; Kiernan, 2000). With-

out examining the reasons for cross-national

differences, our knowledge of why individuals

vary in their tendencies of cohabiting or in other

family processes is ultimately limited.

Generally speaking, cross-national com-

parisons are especially suitable for answering

two types of explanatory questions. The rst

concerns the effects of public policies on

family-related outcomes. Because variations in

family and welfare policies are most likely to be

observed at the national level, researchers inter-

ested in policy effects are almost required to use

international comparisons. A large proportion of

existing cross-national family research indeed

centers on the consequences of social policies

(Cooke & Baxter, 2010; Pettit & Hook, 2009);

specically, many scholars inquire about the

various outcomes resulting from cross-national

differences in policies supporting families of

young children. They have shown that greater

state support through parental leave provi-

sions and tax and child-care schemes decrease

mothers’ employment discontinuity (Gornick,

Meyers, & Ross, 1997), wage penalties on moth-

ers’ part-time or intermittent employment (Stier,

Lewin-Epstein, & Braun, 2001), both men’s and

women’s sense of work–family conict (Stier,

Lewin-Epstein, & Braun, 2012), the difculty

fathers with less education have in nding time

for their children (Sayer, Gauthier, & Fursten-

berg, 2004), the gap in children’s academic

performance between single- and two-parent

families (Pong et al., 2003), the likelihood of

living in poverty for families headed by single

mothers (Misra, Moller, & Budig, 2007), and

full-time working wives’ disadvantage in happi-

ness relative to homemakers (Treas et al., 2011).

Social policies that help ease women’s difculty

in combining jobs and child rearing are also

argued to give rise to public approval of moth-

ers’ participation in the labor force (Charles &

Cech, 2010; Sjöberg, 2004). Other researchers

rely on cross-national comparisons to determine

whether and which policies contribute to a rise

in fertility (Gauthier, 2007). Their research

reveals, for example, the positive inuences of

policies that offer cash benets to families and

increase the accessibility of formal child care

and parental leaves (Castles, 2003; Gauthier &

Hatzius, 1997; Rønsen, 2004). Other policies

of interest to family scholars are those related

to taxes and welfare transfers, because they

can potentially reduce family disparities within

countries. Using an international comparative

analysis, Heuveline and Weinshenker (2008),