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Copyright of Journal of Family Research (JFR) is the property of University of Bamberg Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how employed single-parents differ from parents in two-parent families in their experience of work-to-family conflict (WFC) and family-to-work conflict (FWC). Looking at job-related as well as family-related demands and resources, this research investigated to what degree these demands and resources contribute to differences in WFC and FWC, how their relevance in predicting conflicts varies between single parents and other parents and the role of compositional differences in work and family demands and resources. Design/methodology/approach: Cross-sectional linear regression analyses were applied to analyze a random sample of employees in large work organizations in Germany. The sample included 3,581 parents with children up to the age of 25, of whom 346 were single parents. Findings: The results indicated that single parents face more FWC, but not more WFC, than other parents. For all parents, job demands such as overtime, supervising responsibilities and availability expectations were associated with higher levels of WFC, whereas job resources such as job autonomy, support from supervisors and flexible working hours were associated with lower levels of WFC. In predicting FWC, family demands and resources played only a minor role. However, results provide only scant evidence of differences between single parents and other parents in terms of the effects of job and family demands and resources. Originality/value: This study offers interesting insights into the diversity of WFC and FWC experiences in Germany. It provides first evidence of the impact of job and family demands and resources on both directions of work–family conflicts among employed single parents as a specific social group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive ability plays a prominent role among individual characteristics favorable for success in life. The extent to which endowments for cognitive ability can be realized is an important aspect of unequal life chances in a society. Social origin is considered particularly relevant for realizing cognitive genetic potentials, but related empirical findings are mixed. This paper examines whether there are differences in the interactions between genetic variation and social origin across distinct parental resources and whether the patterns of interactions are (non)linear for three different cohorts of twins (late childhood, adolescents, young adults). Our results showed inconsistent interaction patterns across cohorts and parental resources. A pattern following the Scarr-Rowe Interaction (SRI) was observed only for the younger twins (late childhood) and only for parental occupational status. There were (for the most) no interaction patterns for the adolescent twins. For the young adult twins, patterns partly followed a "reverse" SRI. Taken together, the results suggested that, first of all, parental occupational status and household income moderate either genetic or environmental contributions to cognitive ability in Germany, however, not consistently as a Scarr-Rowe interaction. Using composite measures would have obscured these differential effects of social origin. The interaction patterns are mostly not in line with an SRI but can be approximated using a linear approach in many cases. • In most cases, results do not align with a Scarr-Rowe Interaction (SRI). • Occupational status influenced genetic contributions to cognitive ability. • Household income affected the contribution of shared environments. • Interaction patterns were more often linear than with marked thresholds. • For adolescent twins, a "reversed" SRI was partly observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational attainment in adolescence is of paramount importance for attaining higher education and for shaping subsequent life chances. Sociological accounts focus on the role of differences in socioeconomic resources in intergenerational reproduction of educational inequalities. These often disregard the intergenerational transmission of cognitive ability and the importance of children's cognitive ability to educational attainment. Psychological perspectives stress the importance of cognitive ability for educational attainment but underemphasize potentially different roles of specific socioeconomic resources in shaping educational outcomes, as well as individual differences in cognitive ability. By integrating two strands of research, a clearer picture of the pathways linking the family of origin, cognitive ability, and early educational outcomes can be reached. Using the population-based TwinLife study in Germany, we investigated multidimensional pathways linking parental socioeconomic position to their children's cognitive ability and academic track attendance in the secondary school. The sample included twins ( N = 4008), respectively ages 11 and 17, and siblings ( N = 801). We observed strong genetic influences on cognitive ability, whereas shared environmental influences were much more important for academic tracking. In multilevel analyses, separate dimensions of socioeconomic resources influenced child cognitive ability, controlling parental cognitive ability. Controlling adolescent cognitive ability and parental cognitive ability, parental socioeconomic resources also directly affected track attendance. This indicated that it is crucial to investigate the intertwined influences on educational outcomes in adolescence of both cognitive ability and the characteristics of the family of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines work-family conflict (WFC) among employees in Germany, with a specific focus on the psychological contract as a component of employment relationships. We investigate different dimensions of psychological contract breach (PCB), in addition to resources and demands at the workplace, as predictors of WFC. Based on a linked employer-employee study (LEEP-B3) of 100 large organizations in Germany, with a sample consisting of 4,767 employees, crosssectional multilevel random effects regression models were estimated to allow a better understanding of how psychological contracts add to the explanation of WFC in relation to job resources and demands. Our study showed that employees' perceived overall imbalance in mutual obligations of employers and employees, as well as PCB of more specific expectations, did indeed prove to be relevant in predicting a higher degree of WFC. PCB is most predictive for WFC when those expectations concerning specific obligations are breached that are more closely and concretely connected to reconciling responsibilities from work and personal life such as availability and flexibility. The findings suggest that psychological contracts play a significant role in the emergence of WFC additionally to job demands and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German twin family study ‘TwinLife’ was designed to enhance our understanding of the development of social inequalities over the life course. The interdisciplinary project investigates mechanisms of social inequalities across the lifespan by taking into account psychological as well as social mechanisms, and their genetic origin as well as the interaction and covariation between these factors. Main characteristics of the study are: (1) a multidimensional perspective on social inequalities, (2) the assessment of developmental trajectories in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood in a longitudinal design by using (3) a combination of a multi-cohort cross-sequential and an extended twin family design, while (4) capturing a large variation of behavioral and environmental factors in a representative sample of about 4,000 German twin families. In the present article, we first introduce the theoretical and empirical background of the TwinLife study, and second, describe the design, content, and implementation of TwinLife. Since the data will be made available as scientific use file, we also illustrate research possibilities provided by this project to the scientific community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Working conditions of academic staff have become increasingly complex and occupational exposure has risen. This study investigates whether work-related stress is associated with the use of prescription drugs for cognitive enhancement (CE).Methods: The study was designed around three web-based surveys (n1 = 1131; n2 = 936; n3 = 906) to which university teachers at four German universities were asked to respond. It assessed past CE-drug use and the willingness to use CE-drugs as factors influencing future use. Overlap among participants across the surveys allowed for analyses of stability of the results across time.Results: Our study suggests a currently very low prevalence of CE-drug use as well as a low willingness to use such drugs. The results showed a strong association between perceptions of work-related stress and all measures of CE-drug use (when controlling for potential confounding factors). They also showed that past use of CE-drugs increased participants' willingness to use them again in the future, as did lower levels of social support. Two different measures showed that participants' moral qualms against the use of CE-drugs decreased their probability of using them.Conclusions: The results increase our knowledge about the prevalence of CE-drug use and our understanding of what motivates and inhibits the use of CE-drug. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens in the occupational careers of men if the intergenerational continuity in status reproduction is disrupted by the failure to reproduce the parental level of educational attainment? We frame this failure as a risk for intergenerational status maintenance and ask whether such a risk induces extra effort by way of compensation. By studying eight birth cohorts born between 1919 and 1971 characterized by largely differing conditions with regard to educational and occupational opportunities, we examine how macro-social conditions contribute to opportunities to compensate for such failure later on. In examining this question, we add a new piece to the puzzle of how social origin and education contribute to status attainment and of how the social context shapes these linkages across historical time. We estimated multilevel growth curve models to assess the effect of educational downward mobility (EDM) on the development of occupational status over the career. Our empirical results show that the status of men who experience EDM increases faster over the course of their careers. Moreover, these men reach a slightly higher status as compared with their peers who had reached at least the same educational level as their fathers. The prevailing macro-societal conditions did not cause variation in the effect of EDM on men's career attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the German Data Service Center for Business and Organizational Data (DSC-BO). The DSC-BO was founded at Bielefeld University in August 2010 in response to the limited offer of organizational data and the need for special support in Germany. Its specialization covers the provision of organizational data and supplementary services. It provides both qualitative and quantitative research.

Studies examining the interplay between children's academic ability and parental background are rare, and their findings are mixed and inconclusive. This paper addresses possible reinforcing or compensating relationships between child characteristics and parental social background in their influence on the transition to upper secondary education, the most important transition in the German school system. We use the German TwinLife data for genetically informed analyses and include comprehensive information on parental background as well as child cognitive ability and personality. We find no evidence for a significant influence of reinforcing or compensatory interactions in addition to the strong additive effects of child and parental characteristics. The ACE decomposition with covariates shows an almost equal influence of genetic variation and shared environments. However, indicators of child academic ability and parental background contribute only a little to explaining both contributions. Interestingly, the influence of child characteristics on enrollment in upper secondary school works mainly through environmental rather than genetic effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the restructuring of the employment system in post-communist societies, taking East Germany after 1989 as an example. Due to the German Democratic Republic's 'accession' to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990, the transitional process here was a particular one. More than other post-communist transformations, the East German case is seen as a prototype of a 'simple' adaptation process. In this study we explore whether such a simple adaptation process actually occurred, with the allocation mechanisms used in West Germany being transferred to East Germany. We investigate how different kinds of human resources accumulated and exhibited before 1989 helped to promote individual career mobility after 1989. One of the central and surprising results of the analyses is that individual assets (such as mobility competencies acquired under the state-socialist regime) were of only secondary importance for success and failure in the unified labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with one major aspect of the transformation of former socialist societies: the reallocation of persons in the occupational and class structure via individual mobility processes. In East Germany, this transformation occurred within the unique context of the legal, political and economic incorporation of the former German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic of Germany. Theoretically, we develop hypotheses on the society of origin, the society of destination, and the transformation process itself as well as hypotheses on the determinants of success and failure in the transition process. Empirically, we rely on the East German part of the German Life History Study (GLHS), a representative study of the East German women and men born in 1929-31, 1939-41, 1951-53 and 1959-61. Our analyses focus especially on the transition process between 1989 and 1993. Among the unexpected results are the high degree of occupational stability among those able to remain in the labour market and the high rate of downward mobility combined with a low rate of unemployment among former managers and affiliates of the Communist regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis of survey data investigating the extent to which household and life structures are bound up with different degrees of social integration and assistance. The author looks at these variables for signs of deep fissions in German society and indications of new forms of solidarity or de-solidarity.

Twin comparisons offer a powerful quasi-experimental design to study the impact of the family of origin on children's life chances. Yet, there are concerns about the generalizability of results obtained from twin studies because twin families are structurally different and twins have a genetic resemblance. We examine these concerns by comparing mothers' reports on their parenting styles for twin and non-twin children between twin and non-twin families, as well as within twin families. We use two German studies for our comparisons: TwinLife and pairfam. Our results demonstrate that twins receive more differential treatment and more emotional warmth than non-twins; however, these differences are largely accounted for by age differences between children. Overall, our results indicate that results on parenting obtained from twin studies can be generalized to non-twin families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German Twin Family Panel (TwinLife) is a German longitudinal study of monozygotic and dizygotic same-sex twin pairs and their families that was designed to investigate the development of social inequalities over the life course. The study covers an observation period from approximately 2014 to 2023. The target population of the sample are reared-together twins of four different age cohorts that were born in 2009/2010 (cohort 1), in 2003/2004 (cohort 2), in 1997/1998 (cohort 3) and between 1990 and 1993 (cohort 4). In the first wave, the study included data on 4097 twin families. Families were recruited in all parts of Germany so that the sample comprises the whole range of the educational, occupational and income structure. As of 2019, two face-to-face, at-home interviews and two telephone interviews have been conducted. Data from the first home and telephone interviews are already available free of charge as a scientific use-file from the GESIS data archive. This report aims to provide an overview of the study sample and design as well as constructs that are unique in TwinLife in comparison with previous twin studies - such as an assessment of cognitive abilities or information based on the children's medical records and report cards. In addition, major findings based on the data already released are displayed, and future directions of the study are presented and discussed.