This article examines changes in employed African American mothers' use of relatives for child care. Data from nationally representative pooled cross sections show that the proportion of Black mothers relying on extended kin for care of their preschool-age children declined significantly between 1977 and 1994. Multivariate analyses reveal that the decline characterized all subgroups of employed African American mothers but was less pronounced for young, single, mothers living outside the South. Thus, by 1994, employed Black mothers who most needed relatives' (...) child care support received it, while those who could manage without such help did so. This change suggests that African Americans' use of kin-provided support responds to shifts in broader social and economic conditions that affect the balance of resources and needs within extended families. (shrink)

Men's gender ideologies have changed more slowly than women's since the 1970s; this article analyzes the period and cohort processes that underlie men's attitude change and how the individual-level characteristics of conservative men differ by birth cohort. Using multidimensional measures of gender role attitudes from the 1974-1998 General Social Surveys, the author finds that changes in men's attitudes have been brought about both by period influences, especially during the 1970s, and by cohort replacement. Analyses of multivariate interaction effects demonstrate that (...) education has become a much less significant predictor of attitudes for men born after 1945. (shrink)