Intergenerational Transmission of Reproductive Behavior in Sweden, 1850-1889

Previous studies have consistently observed intergenerational continuities in childbearing. This study uses individual-level parish records to examine the intergenerational transmission of fertility over the life course of women in Sweden during the fertility transition in the second half of the nineteenth century. Bivariate correlations, event history analysis and Poisson regression models are estimated for a large number of indicators of reproductive behavior. In line with the literature, the findings show evidence of intergenerational fertility correlations. The observed correlations are often small, but show that fertility transmission did occur during the demographic transition. The findings confirm our current understanding of intergenerational transmission and highlight the role of kin members in shaping reproductive outcomes.

Intergenerational transmission of psychopathy and mediation via psychosocial risk factors

BackgroundIntergenerational continuities in criminal behaviour have been well documented, but the familial nature of psychopathic personality is less well understood.AimsTo establish if there is an association between the psychopathic traits of a community sample of men and their offspring and whether psychosocial risk factors mediate this.MethodParticipants of the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (n = 478 dyads) were assessed for psychopathy using the PCL: SV. Multilevel regression models were used to investigate intergenerational continuity and mediation models examined indirect effects.ResultsThe fathers' psychopathy was transmitted to both sons and daughters. The transmission of Factor 1 scores was mediated via the fathers' employment problems. For male offspring, the Factor 2 scores were mediated via the fathers' drug use, accommodation and employment problems. For female offspring, Factor 2 scores were mediated via the fathers' employment problems.ConclusionsUnderstanding of the specific role of certain psychosocial risk factors may be useful in developing preventive measures for the development of psychopathy.

‘Non-Servile Virtuosi’ in Insubordinate Spaces: School Disaffection, Refusal and Resistance in a Former English Coalfield

This article reviews excerpts from a body of ethnographic data examining some young people's disaffection from, and refusal of, the education project as a whole in a UK coalfield area. Key examples are used to illustrate intergenerational continuities and disjunctions in attitudes to formal education in these exceptional and sometimes ‘insubordinate’ localities. It is argued that reviewing such data in the light of concepts emerging from the literature on Italian autonomist politics of the 1970s — particularly Paulo Virno's work — is potentially fruitful in reclaiming a politics of educational refusal from the dual grip of a middle-class imaginary that abhors it as pathological and dangerous and a body of scholarship that seems incapable of moving beyond either lionising it as heroic or loathing it as nihilistic.