Stepfamilies in Canada : numbers, characteristics, stability and childbearing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The following thesis examines stepfamilies in Canada within a socio-demographic framework, using the 2001 General Social Survey (GSS) on families, and is divided into three main sections. First, there is an extended literature review on family theory and the emergence of stepfamilies. This section provides the background for a discussion of why stepfamilies are still often perceived as problematic and, therefore, stigmatized; we also define different stepfamily forms. The question of how to measure stepfamilies is a major concern in this research. Indeed, depending on whether one takes a residential or an inter-residential perspective, the number of households involved in stepfamily life changes substantially. We first present a cross-sectional perspective by describing the stepfamilies examined at survey. The main focus here is to compare stepfamilies with intact and lone parent families in order to see the extent and nature of the differences between them. Our results suggest that stepfamilies do not differ as much as expected from intact families with regard to certain socioeconomic variables, such as income. The next stage involves an analysis of stepfamilies in a longitudinal perspective in order to better understand stepfamily dynamics. In doing so, we focus on stepfamily instability and the likelihood of having a common child, applying the method of event history analysis. In this longitudinal perspective, we find that stepfamilies face a high risk of experiencing a separation and that this risk increases substantially over time; we also find that stepfamily couples living in a common-law union have a higher risk of separation than those who are married. The arrival of a common child within a stepfamily appears to be determined mainly by the age of the mother and of existing children. The younger the mother and the younger the children, the more likely a stepfamily is to witness the arrival of a common child. The most compelling finding of this research lies in the differences observed in the outcomes of male and female respondents with regard to their stepfamily dynamics.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".