Immanence and Transcendence: The Relationship between Patterns of Family Decision Making and Fertility among Catholics and Protestants Tim Futing Liao Sociological Analysis, Vol. 53, No. 1. (Spring, 1992), pp. 49-62. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0038-0210%28199221%2953%3A1%3C49%3AIATTRB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q Sociological Analysis is currently published by Association for the Sociology of Religion, Inc..
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Sociological Analysis 1992, 53:1 49.62
Immanence and Transcendence: The Relationship between Patterns of Family Decision Making and Fertility among Catholics and Protestants* Tim Futing Liao University of lllinois
Swanson attributes the spread of Protestantism and the Reformation vis-kvis the existence of Catholicism to the form of governance in European societies. This article takes up Swanson's theoretical framework and studies the Catholic fertility differential - one of the behavioral pattern that differentiate Catholics from Protestants - in the light of this pattem-of-decisionmaking approach. It is found that a contemporary American woman living in a family with a pattem of &cision making s i m i h to the sociological setting that was conducive to the existence of Catholicism in the past would have higher fertility, regardless of her religious preference and k r marital age. In addition, this effect of patterns of family decision making on fertility would not be dependent on her religion. The lack of association between patterns of decision making and religious preferences suggests that collective purposes art. rather unifonn between Catholics and Protestants in America.
Fertility among Catholics is traditionally higher than non-Catholics in North America (see, e.g., Burch, 1966; Freedman, Whelpton, and Campbell, 1959; Ryder and Westoff, 1971). However, the past two decades have seen a decline of fertility among Catholics - or a convergence of Catholic fertility with other religious groups - in the United States. The declining rate has largely been attributed to the defection of American Catholic women - two-thirds of whom are using contraceptive methods disapproved by the Roman Catholic Church - from the traditional pronatalist teachings of their Church (Westoff and Bumpass, 1973).This has led some researchers to conclude that the so-called "Catholic fertility" was ending and that Catholics can no longer be viewed as a distinctive group in terms of childbearing behavior (Westoff and Jones, 1979). Although the fertility of Catholics and non-Catholics is converging, a significant fertility differential between white Catholic and Protestant couples still existed during the mid-1970s (Mosher and Hendershot, 1984). In national data, Catholic and Protestant couples consistently differ in children ever born as well as birth *I would like to thank Barbara Enrwisle, Ronald Rindfuss, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments a an earlier version.
probabilities at each birth order (Ford, 1981). What determines such a differential, if it still exists? If the convergence has not occurred, can it be that it is the type of family organization being more conducive to a certain set of religious ideas, rather than the religion to which the individual belongs, that contributes to this childbearing behavioral difference? Religious differentials of fertility have never been examined in terms of the type of social organization congenial to a particular religion. One important reason for examining this relationship is that social groups organized as an association rather than a social system (the criterion for either of which is pattern of governance) were responsible for the spread of Protestantism (Swanson, 1967, 1986). Swanson has found that personality, deviance, and moral judgment are related to whether the family is organized as an association for a social system in contemporary America. The purpose of this article is to study the effects of the family organization as a sociological semng - which may be differentially compatible to religion - on fertility differences between Catholics and Protestants in the United States. Put differently, the interplay between the pattern of decision making, an indication of whether a family is organized as an association or a social system, and fertility may help us determine if there is something else that accounts for the fertility differential in addition to (or instead of) just being Catholic. The data set used is the 1978 Detroit Area Study (Goldberg, 1978), A Study of the Family, which is the most recent survey available with questions about patterns of decision making as well as a fertility history.
THEORETlCAL FRAMEWORK Is the social organization of the family also an indispensable factor influencing fertility in addition to pronatalism as a form of ideology? To answer this question we need to look at the environment in which Protestantism spread in European societies. Swanson suggests that there is a connection between association/social system as patterns of governance and the Reformation. He defines an association as a group that serves its members' interests, and a social system as "the group as an arrangement through which people pursue collective or corporate interests" (1986:191). He studies the relationship between association/social system and the spread of Protestantism by looking at the disputes over the form of God's presence and action. He shows that Protestants and Catholics both saw God as separate from His creation - active in it yet transcendent over it - but that Catholics nevertheless saw God as also being immanent in the sacramental action of the Church itself. According to Swanson (1986:193-94), since experiences of deity are generated by experiences of the life and action of a society, in particular of the force of collective purposes, [platterns of governance characteristic of social systems make it seem that collective purposes are immanent in the social structure through which they are made articulate and then are implemented. In associations, however, both collective and special interests shape collective acts and the two are intertwined in the structure of governance and mixed in its choices and actions. . . . It may be, therefore, that experiences of God as immanent are more likely in societies organized as social systems than those organized as associations.
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51
It is important to reiterate here that either a large group like a society or a small group like a family may possess the characteristics of an association or a social system. Swanson has empirically demonstrated that families organized as social systems are likely to exhibit close, warm relations among their members, while families organized as associations are more likely to stress the child's autonomy and personal growth. In studying Australian religious minorities, Day (1984) found that the fertility of a minority tends to exceed that of the majority if the minority is also pronatalist, but the minority's fertility tends to be the same or lower because of the individual pursuit of personal advancement if minority status is not accompanied by pronatalism. The thread running from association/social system and from Catholicism to fertility should by now be clear. Other things being equal, families organized as a social system are more likely to have a higher fertility rate because the companionship cherished would value a numerically greater group, in which collective purposes would be more easily facilitated; on the other hand, families organized as an association are more likely to have a lower fertility because of the emphasis on the child's future autonomy, individual achievement, and advancement. These things can be achieved, for instance, through supporting the child for his or her education. A large family makes giving every child quality time, attention, and support for education less likely. O n the other hand, contemporary Catholic teaching emphasizes the positive value of love and close companionship, as well as the positive value of sexual intercourse in fostering such companionship (Dyck, 1977). In fact, Greeley (1989) recently found that moral and family values held by Catholics and Protestants persistently differ in the United States such that Catholics would stress traditional relations between parents and children and sexual traditionalism (which relates sex to love and companionship within the family). Therefore, Catholics in the United States should be more likely to exhibit an overall higher fertility, regardless of their family types as an association or a social system, because of their emphasis on the positive value of love and close companionship and on their moral and pronatalist values and attitudes. Along these lines of logic, I set up two hypotheses to test empirically: (1) Women living in families organized as social systems should have a higher fertility than women residing in families organized as associations, other things being equal. (2) The effect of the type of farnily organization on fertility should be greater among Catholics than among Protestants, other things being equal. The first research question is to investigate the positive effect of a family organized as a social system on ferclity, while the second is to study whether Catholic women from families organized as social systems would have an even higher fertility over and above the combined level of Catholics regardless of their family organization and of families organized as social systems regardless of their religious affiliation. Equivalently, the second question is about whether the effect of family organization on fertility would be greater for Catholics than that for Protestants. Essentially, the first question asks if family decision making has anything to do with fertility, while the second question asks whether a certain social setting that used to be congenial to the origin of Catholicism is still favorable for Catholic ideals and attitudes, thereby at least partially explaining the fertility differential. If the second hypothesis does not pass muster, it would suggest that the immanent or transcendent nature of a social organization cannot be assumed to vary from one religion to the
other in present-day America. Although the two hypotheses deal with the relationship between patterns of decision making and childbearing behavior, they do so in a different way from previous research. Other researchers have considered the relationship before, but only in terms of the equality between husband and wife. Kuthiala (1972) outlined the necessity of studying decision-making patterns in the household as related to family planning and birth control, and proposed the theoretical framework and plans of examining family organization in terms of segregated or joint conjugal role relationships. Empirically, the family decision-making pattern has been studied by looking at wife's junior versus more egalitarian role relative to husband's (e.g., Badges and Van Loo, 1980). This approach is quite different from examining decision making in a more general framework such as Swanson's mode of governance. Researchers to date have looked only at sexual equality (or inequality) in family decision making, whereas the present article attempts to examine patterns of family decision making as derivatives of the immanent and the transcendent characteristics.
DATA The data used in the analysis are taken from Detroit Area Study, 1978, which had 650 Detroit area women personally interviewed about their families. (Typically, women are surveyed or studied for their fertility since it is more confusing and difficult to obtain cumulative fertility, such as children ever born, for men.) The survey items included questions on sex role attitudes, patterns of decision making, and fertility history, in addition to questions on regular demographic information. This data set is the most recent survey that provides sufficient information about family decision making. To have a more homogeneous sample and purge as many confounding factors as possible, some observations are excluded from the ana1ysis.l A total of 466 white women who were either Catholics or Protestants are retained in the analysis. Seven variables are used after recoding. Educution has three categories - below 12 years, 12 years, and more than 12 years of schooling. Family income in 1977 falls into three levels - families with income below $20,000, of $20,000 or more but less than $35,000, and of $35,000 and above. Years of marriage since first marriage has also three groups - 10 years and below, more than 10 but less than 25 years, and 25 years and more. These three variables are used to control possible confounding socioeconomic and cohort effects. Religion refers to Catholic or Protestant preference. Here Protestants are taken as one category, consistent with Swanson's theoretical formulation. (For a detailed analysis of how Protestant denominations differ in terms of socioeconomic and family characteristics, see Heaton, 1986.) The pattern of decision 'They are deleted also because they d o not form enough data points and thus would make the contingency table-type analysis impossible if included. Of the total sample of 650 cases, 77 (1 1.8%) blacks and 6 (0.9%) others, 40 (6.2%) people whose family income was not ascertained or refused to answer about their family income in 1977, and 24 (3.9%) interviewees who did not have a religious preference or who do not know about their religious preference, as well as 25 (4%) people with non-Christian religion such as Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist religions, and 5 (0.8%) people with nontraditional Christian beliefs are excluded. T h e excluded cases o n the three variables of race, family income, and religious preference may overlap.
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making variable is a summary index of answers to five questions.2 The respondents were asked if husband usually, husband a little more often, husband and wife equally, wife a little more often, or wife usually has the most say about the following five situations: (1) which friends to see most often, (2) which relatives to see most often, (3) purchase of major household items, (4) how much money the family would spend on food, and (5) how often for both to go out for an evening. The summary is further recoded so that the answers fall into two categories - people who gave equal decisionmaking answers at least twice, and those who answered once or less. Based on patterns of family decision making defined by Swanson (1986:192), the former category is used as a representation of family organized as an association, while the latter is employed as that of a family organized as a social system.3 Two dependent variables are used, the respondent's actual and expected fertility. Number of live birth is a variable with five categories - 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 or above. This variable from the 1978 Detroit Area Study is a measure of children ever born. Similarly, the total number of expected birth has been coded as 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 or above. Both variables are used in separate models for testing the hypotheses with the aim of finding consistency between the effects of patterns of family decision making on fertility expectation and that on fertility behavior. As the results show in a later section, these two measures give consistent findings from the model. Typically, regression analysis is used for studying fertility differentials. Out of two major concerns, regression or structural equations type analysis is not used in this research. Some of the variables, such as family income, number of live births, and of expected births are skewed to the right. That is, most cases are located near the lower end of the distribution, while there are only a few observations that have extremely high values. More important, people's preference of the number of children is continuous but not equally spaced (Goldberg and Coombs, 1963; Coombs et al., 1975). The mean response model is opted for rather than a regular logit or polytomous logistic model, simply because the former takes into account not only the ordinal characteristic but also the values of the response categories. Moreover, the interpretation of the mean response model is straightforward, similar to that of regression analysis, though its estimation is based on the contingency table. The basic formulation of the model estimated follows those given by Bhapkar (1968), Williams and Grizzle (1972), and Agresti (1984):
where Mi is the conditional mean of the response in the dependent variable Y within
~~-
-
T h e pattern of decision making was measured as a behavior true at the time of interview, whereas childbearing behavior is relaced to a longer period of time. However, there is no evidence thac patterns of governance in the family vary with time (except with cohort). 3A common criterion cutting through all nine types of patterns of family decision making defined by Swanson is that family decisions in various situations are jointly made by discussion and consultation in families organized as associations, whereas one member (husband or wife) has more say over the partner concerning these decisions in families organized as social systems.
54
SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
each level i of an independent variable X, p is the average of the conditional means, or the grand mean, and @ is the change in the conditional mean per change in the levels of X. This independent variable X can be readily expanded to include more than one variable, each of which may have two or more categories. Then there will be more than one @, too. While equation (1) above is easy to interpret, the estimation of the conditional mean score of response Y is carried out by
where vj is the observed score for each level j of response Y, and 7rij denotes the probability that a random observation from the ith sample belongs to the jth grouping. In the present analysis the focal independent variables (X) are religion and decision making. Here I do not assume any causal order between these two variables. Patterns of governance, though serving as a congenial setting for the spread of one religion versus another, do not necessarily cause someone to choose a religious preference. Conversely, religious affiliations do not necessarily make one type of decision making more likely than the other. Ideally, the model should include all three control variables. However, it is not possible to do so because the contingency table would have 540 cells (3 x 3 x 3 x 2 x 2 x 5) for only 466 cases. Moreover, further collapsing of the categories in these variables would not be substantively meaningful, either. In the next section I will show that the pattern of decision making is not dependent on the levels of family income and education. Thus, three variables - religion, decision making, and years of marriage - are used as the X variables to test the first hypothesis. A n interaction term between religion and patterns of decision making is subsequently included to test the second hypothesis. The parameters of the independent variables are estimated on the response function of number of live births and number of expected births in two separate models. Rather than using the natural score spacing of 0, 1, 3 and so on, I assign to the fertility variables scores taking account of unequal spacing of preference. The scores are taken from Goldberg and Coombs (1963).4 They are 0 for 0 birth, 0.462 for 1 birth, 0.731 for 2 births, 0.885 for 3 births, and 1 for 4 and more births.5 In reality it makes a greater difference for a woman to have 1 child versus none, or 2 children versus 1, than, say, 5 children rather than 4. The estimation of models with such a scoring scheme gives an overall better fit than models with equal spacing between the categories in the response variable. Therefore, for the sake of parsimony, only the results from models with unequal spacing in the response score will be given in the following section (see Appendix to compare these results with those from models with the dependent variable using equally-spaced categories).
AND DISCUSSION To demonstrate the independence of the pattern of decision making and other ,While their study was in the early 1960s, there is no reason why their scores cannot be used on women whose period of childbearing behavior straddles the decade of 1960. T h e last score is a combination of their values for preference for 4 and 5 children.
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socioeconomic and demographic variables in the analysis, I present the cross-tabulations among them in Table 1. It appears that the amount of family income is not dependent on the type of decision making, with a similar percentage distribution in the two columns of social system and association and an adequately insignificant likelihood ratio. The percentage distributions of educational attainment in the two categories of decision making are almost identical, and the likelihood ratio value is insignificant on 2 degrees of freedom. These statistics indicate that, if family decision making does affect fertility, it is not because the variable is merely a representation of socioeconomic characteristics such as family income and education. TABLE 1 Classifications of Patterns of Decision Making with
Family Income, Education, Years of Marriage, and Religion
Patterns of Decision Making
Social System Association
Frequency (percent) Frequency (percent)
Family Income:
< $20,000 $20,000-$34,999 $35,000+ Total Likelihood Ratio
71 (32.87)
89 (41.20)
56 (25.93)
216 (100.00)
52 (20.80) 122 (48.80) 76 (30.40) 250 (100.00)
49 (22.69)
101 (46.76)
66 (30.56)
216 (100.00)
88 (35.20) 77 (30.80) 85 (34.00) 250 (100.00)
41 (18.98)
75 (34.72)
100 (46.30)
216 (100.00)
122 (48.80) 128 (51.20) 250 (100.00)
107 (49.54) 109 (50.46) 216 (100.00)
G2:0.848 (p > 0.65)
Education: < 12 years 12 years over 12 years Total Likelihood Ratio GZ:0.292 (p
> 0.86)
Years of Marriage: 1( 10 years 11-24 years 25+ years Total Likelihood Ratio G2:16.286 (p Religion: Catholic Protestant Total Likelihood Ratio
74 (29.60) 113 (45.20) 63 (25.20) 250 (100.00)
< 0.001)
G2:0.025 (p > 0.87)
Years of marriage, however, is related to pattern of decision making (GZ significant at the 0.001 level). Reading across the columns along the three rows, it seems that younger marriage cohorts are more likely to organize their families as social systems, whereas older marriage cohorts tend to pattern their families as associations. Although there is no satisfactory explanation for this cohort effect, one may suspect that family
decision making might become more egalitarian as the marital years go by. Since the patrern of decision making is really a function of how individuals are brought up and socialized, there is not enough ground for the suspicion that ways of decision making can change easily. Considering the influence years of marriage may have on number of live children ever born in addition to the mutual dependence of the two variables above, years of marriage is undoubtedly necessary to be included in the mean response model evaluation. Not surprisingly, patterns of family decision making are totally independent of religious preference among contemporary American Catholics and Protestants. This finding is consistent with what Swanson found using the Berkeley sample (1986). An interesting point to make is that Catholic families are not necessarily organized as social systems in present-day American society, even though a social system milieu may have contributed to the presence of Catholicism in the past. In fact, Protestants are at least as likely as Catholics to organize their famiIies akin to a social system (51 percent of families organized as social systems are Protestants). Four mean response models have been estimated, and the results are reported in the four columns in Table 2. All four models fit well, as indicated by the chi-square statistics in the last row. Comparing the two dependent variables, the findings are consistent. The parameter estimate that changes the most when expected complete fertility is used is that for the religion variable. The significance level increases from 0.10 to 0.05. O n a more general level, most parameter estimates, especially those for the grand mean, have a greater value on the models with total number of expected births as the dependent variable. This indicates that on average women tend to expect to have more children than they actually do. The difference, however, is a small amount of 0.1 on the present nonlinear scale, which translates to about one-third of a child on the original children ever born scale (see Appendix for the grand mean values on the original scale). The interpretation of the estimates is fairly straightforward. A high value indicates a high fertility, be it the total number of live births or of expected births. Theoreticaily, the lowest possible value is 0 (0 birth) and the highest is 1 (4 or more births) for any group of women in the study. If a parameter is significant, then the estimated value can be added to the grand mean to achieve the mean fertility level for the group with those particular characteristicsindicated by the X variabies. For instance, under Model 3 the estimated expected total fertility for a Catholic woman who had been married for 17 years from a family organized as a social system would be (0.774 + 0.073 + 0.023 + 0.027 =) 0.897, which translates back to about 3 children. The way to convert the scale back to the more familiar system of numbering is based on the "unfolding" theory. (Goldberg and Coombs, 1963). Along the scale of 0,0.462,0.731,0.885, and 1, adapted from Goldberg and Coombs, an estimated value falling between two preference points given above will be considered approaching a value of the closer point of the two. The parameter estimates for the omirted categories can be obtained by taking the negative value of the sum of parameter estimates for the categories of the same variable given in the table. For instance, also under Model 3, the estimated expected total fertility for a Protestant woman who had been married for 27 years from a family organized as an association would be (0.774 - i0.073 -
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TABLE 2 Parameter Estimates for Mean Response Models
with Unequally Spaced Response Scores of
Number of Live Births and Number of Expected Births
Variable
Dependent Variable Number of Expected Binhs Number of Live Births (11 (21 (31 (4)
Grand Mean Years of Marriage 5 10 years 11-24 years Religion Catholics Decision Making Social System Interaction of Religion and Decision Making Model Residual X2 df
6.72
7 (p > 0.45)
4.73 6 ( p > 0.57)
5.82 7 ( p > 0.56)
4.01
6 (P > 0.67)
Note: (a) The omitted categories are 25 years and over for years of maniage, Protestants for religion, and
association for decision-makingvariables. (b) The values below the parameter estimates are standard errors. (c) * denotes significance at the 0.10, ** at the 0.05, and *** at the 0.01 levels.
0.0881 - 0.023 - 0.027 = ) 0.739, which translates back to about 2 children. The comparison of the two examples above demonstrates that a Catholic woman from a family organized as a social system in the Detroit area would be likely to have had one more child than a Protestant woman from a family organized as an association, even though the former may have been married for a shorter time than the latter. A n interesting pattern implied in Table 2 will become clear if all the parameter estimates for the "25 years and above" category of the years of marriage variable, not given in the table, are derived. That is, the estimates are even lower than the next younger group. Why did the women who had been married for 11 to 24 years by 1978 have the highest, especially actual, fertility among all three groups of marriage cohorts? These women first got married during the period from 1954 to 1967, which included a major part of the baby boom fertility peak, and their fertility aspirations may well have been formed during that period. Overall, the absolute difference among
the categories of the years of marriage variable is much smaller when the dependent variable is the total number of expected births. Since the expectation was contemporaneous of the time of the survey, the fertility aspirations formed while the respondents were younger may have already changed because of the slowed-down childbearing practices of the late 1970s. Another point worth noting is that if we examine actual fertility only, the religious differential is not as stable (comparing Models 1 and 2 in Table 2). If we use the more parsimonious model (Model 1 has an insignificant increase in X2 with the one degree of freedom when the interaction term is omitted from Model 2), the parameter estimate for religion is not significant. Although this does not conclusively suggest that there is nothing particular about a religion, because the same finding is not present in the models concerning fertility expectations, it at least suggests, on the other hand, that patterns of family decision making cannot be neglected when studying religious fertility differentials. The first hypothesis is supported by the results, since all four parameter estimates for the decision-making variable, regardless of the model used, are statistically significant. This suggests that women from families organized as social systems in the Detroit area would be more likely to have, or expect to have, more children than women from families patterned as associations. This effect is independent of the influence from years of marriage and religion, both of which also have significant effects on fertility, with the middle-aged marriage cohort and Catholics more likely to have a high fertility. As far as fertility behavior is concerned, patterns of governance appear to be a stronger predictor for actual fertility than religion, with parameter estimates 50 to 100 percent greater in value (Models 1 and 2). The second hypothesis is not substantiated by the findings, since neither of the interaction terms in Models 2 and 4 is significant. This shows that being a Catholic woman from a family organized as a social system does not make her likely to have an even higher fertility over and above the level she is likely to have based on the two characteristics separately. Put differently, a family organized as a social system does not further facilitate higher fertility because the family is Catholic rather than Protestant. Table 1 already showed that family organization and religion are not associated. The results from Table 2 demonstrate further that these two factors do not have a concerted effect on fertility either. The support for the first and the lack of support for the second hypothesis suggests that an organizational setting congenial to the existence of Catholicism is still conducive to behavior consistent with the Catholic pronatalkt norms - higher fertility - though not to the survival of Catholicism. But this conduciveness does not increase because of the pronatalist norms, as the second hypothesis states. In addition, the significant main effect of Catholics suggests that there is something special about the religion. It shows that convergence did not take place in late 1970s, and that the type of social milieu that used to be favorable for the existence of Catholicism does not account for this fertility differential of religion, though family organization itself also influences fertility. Further investigation into the issue that this Catholic fertility differential could be attributed to a religious group-specific ideology or doctrine (Blake, 1984), a socioeconomic characteristic influence (Petersen, 1975),
IMMANENCE AND TRANSCENDENCE
59
or a minority group status effect (van Heek, 1956; Goldscheider and Uhlenberg, 1969) is beyond the scope of the present article, the purpose of which is to study the relation between family decision making and fertility among Catholics and Protestants. The lack of support for the second hypothesis and the insignificant association between religion and patterns of governance (shown in the bottom panel of Table 1) point to something fundamental: Why is it that the social setting differential that contributed to the Reformation does not make any difference in contemporary religious preferences? The dissociation between religion and patterns of governance today may be attributed to three possible factors - historical change, structural difference, and a unique American religious experience. First, one may argue that times have changed, thus what accounted, as a congenial social setting, for a ~ a m c u l a set r of religious ideas centuries ago may no longer have any influence on religious ideology. This historicism is not invulnerable, because it does not explain why similar social settings may work differently in different periods of time. A second explanation may be that the immanent characteristics of a social system and the transcendent characteristics of an association on a societal scale are drastically different structurally from the similar set of characteristics associated with the family, because the family is, after all, a sociological structure much less complex than a society. A major problem with this line of logic is that it ignores the fact that a family organized as either a social system or an association has essentially a similar decision-making mechanism as its societal counterpart. Finally, the unique American religious experience refers to the "collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a colleqivity" that serves Americans "as a genuine vehicle of national religious self-understanding" (Bellah, 1967:8). This is what is commonly known as American civil religion (Bellah, 1967; Mathisen, 1989). Perhaps because of this unifying experience of American civil religion, the difference of patterns of governance between Catholics and Protestants ceased its existence. In other words, civil religion in America helps iron out the difference in the force of collective purposes between Catholics and Protestants, and promotes a more universal and more transcendent religious reality.
CONCLUSION As Swanson eloquently argued that the spread of Protestantism turned importantly on the difference made by the type of social organization, a social group's organization as a social system or an association has many consequences. In this analysis, I have shown one of the consequences to be the fertility differential between Catholics and Protestants in contemporary America, a persistent phenomenon that demonstrates the invalidity of the thesis of "the ending of Catholic fertility" or "convergence." The pattern of family decision making is an important factor in explaining fertility. The hypothesis that women living in families organized as social systems should have a higher fertility than those residing in families organized as associations.received strong support. This finding suggests that the kind of social organization that was conducive to Catholic doctrines and practices (including
pronatalism) still contributes to higher fertility behavior as well as expectation. The pattern of family decision making, however, does not appear to be the reason why Catholic fertility is not ending, for it does not facilitate the pronatalist effect on fertility among Catholics as it used to facilitate the existence of Catholic ideas. The expectation that the effect of social organization on fertility should be greater among Catholics than Protestants was not confirmed. This finding suggests that this factor is still favorable for the Catholic pronatalist norms, though not for the other aspects of the survival of traditional Catholicism. Instead of possible temporal and structural differences between contemporary American families and European societies during the time of the Reformation, when religion had a more overarching effect, the development of today's religion follows a path that may be more dissimilar in various countries. The social and behavioral consequences of Catholicism are diverse in countries like France, Ireland, and the United States. The unique American experience of its civil religion may be a unifying force that helps reduce the behavioral and social organizational differences between Catholics and Protestants. Although the religious doctrines of Catholics are not easily confused with those of Protestants, the way they organize their families no longer differs, and therefore fertility differentials are not necessarily determined by the type of family organizations characteristic of Catholics or Protestants. Perhaps the experiences of collective purposes on which the immanent and transcendent natures of Catholicism and Protestantism hinged are less palpable today; yet the persistence of systems of governance as associations or social systems may still affect fertility and other human behaviors.
REFERENCES Agresti, Alan. 1984. Analysis of Ordinal Categorial Data. New York: Wiley. Bagozzi, Richard P. and M. Frances Van Loo. 1980. "Decision-making and fertility: a theory of exchange in the family," pp. 91-124 in Thomas K. Burch (ed.), Demographic Behavior: Interdisciplinaty Perspectives on Decision-Making. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Bellah, Robert N. 1967. "Civil religion in America." Daedalw 96:l-21. Bhapkar, V. P. 1968. "On the analysis of contingency tables with a quantitative response." Biomemics 24:329-38. Blake,. -ludith. 1984. "Catholicism and fertility: on attitudes of young Americans." Population and Develop ment Review 10:329-40. Burch, Thomas K. 1966. "The fertility of North American Catholics: a comparative overview." D e m o ~ a p h ~ 3:174-87. Coombs, Clyde H., Lolagne C. Coombs, and Gary H. McClelland. 1975. "Preference scale for number and sex of children." Population Studies 29:273-98. Day, Lincoln H. 1984. "Minority-group status and fertility: a more detailed test of the hypothesis." Sociological Quarterly 25:456-72. Dyck, Arthur 1. 1977. "Religious views", pp. 277-323 in Robert M. Veatch (ed.),.Po@lation Policy and Ethics: The American Experience. New York: Irvington. Ford, Kathleen. 1981. "Socioeconomic differentials and trends in the timing of births." Vital and Heaith Statistics, Series 23, No. 6. Washington, DC: National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Freedman, Ronald, Pascal K. Whelpton, and Arthur A. Campbell. 1959. Family Planning, Sterility and Population Growth. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Goldberg, David. 1978. Denoit Area Study: A Study of the Family. Ann Arbor, MI: ICPSR. and Clyde H. Coombs. 1963. "Some applications of unfolding theory to fertility analysis," pp. 105-29 in Emerging Techniques in Pophtion Research. New York: Milbank Memorial Fund. Goldscheider, Calvin and P. R. Uhlenberg. 1969. "Minority group status and fertility." American lourna1 of Sociology 74:361-72. Greeley, Andrew. 1989. "Protestant and Catholic: is the analogical imagination extinct?" American Sociolo~cdReview 54:485-502. Heaton, Tim B. 1986. "Sociodemographic characteristics of religious groups in Canada." Sociological Analysis 47:54-65. Kuthiala, S. K. 1972. "Decision-making patterns of family planning among husbands and wives: some theoretical issues." Journal of Family Welfare 19:11-22. Mathisen, James A. 1989. "Twenty years after Bellah: whatever happened to American civil religion?" Sociological Analysis 50: 129-46. Mosher, William D. and Gerry E. Hendershot. 1984. "Religion and fertility: a replication." Demography 2 1: 185-92. Petersen, William. 1975. Population, 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan. Ryder, Norman B. and Charles F. Westoff. 1971. Reproduction in the United States: 1965. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Swanson, Guy E. 1967. Religion and Regime: A SociologicalAccount of the Refomranbn. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. . 1986. "Immanence and transcendence: connections with personality and personal life." Sociological Analysis 47: 189-213. van Heek, F. 1956. "Roman-Catholicism and fertility in the Netherlands: demographic aspects of minority status." Population Studies 10:125-38. Westoff, Charles and Larry Bumpass. 1973. "The revolution in birth control practices of U.S. Roman Catholics." Science 179:41-44. Westoff, Charles and E. Jones. 1979. "The end of 'Catholic fertility'." Demography 16:209-18. Williams, 0.Dale and James E. Grizzle. 1972. "Analysis of contingency tables having ordered response categories." loumal of the American Statistical Association 67:55-63.
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SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
APPENDIX Parameter Estimates for Mean Response Models
with Equally Spaced Response Scores of
Number of Live Births and Number of Expected Births
Dependent Variable Number of Live Birth Number of Expected Births (1) (21 (3) (41
Variable Grand Mean Years of Marriage I 10 years
11-24 years Religion Catholics Decision Making Social System Interaction of Religion and Decision Making Model Residual
X2
df Note: (a) The omitted categories are 25 years and over for years of mamage, Protestants for religion, and association for decision-making variables. (b)The values below the parameter estimates are standard errors. (c) * denotes significance at the 0.10, ** at the 0.05, and *** at the 0.01 levels.
