Age Norms, Age Constraints, And Adult Socialization

7/27/2019 Age Norms, Age Constraints, And Adult Socialization

1/9

Age Norms, Age Constraints, and Adult SocializationAuthor(s): Bernice L. Neugarten, Joan W. Moore, John C. LoweSource: The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 70, No. 6 (May, 1965), pp. 710-717Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2774397

Accessed: 15/04/2009 16:41

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the

scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that

promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The

American Journal of Sociology.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2774397?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2774397?origin=JSTOR-pdf


2/9

710 THEAMERICANOURNALOF SOCIOLOGYzations such as research and developmentlaboratories can be divided into two groups(locals or cosmopolitans, professionals ororganizationals, etc.), or ordered along asingle attitude dimension, have beenexaminedin this paper. The data consistedof the responses of individuals in one in-dustrial research laboratorywhen asked torate various professional and organization-al criteria as to their importance in theevaluationof the worth of a technical idea.A factor analysis was used to determinethe underlying dimensionality of the thir-ty-six criteria which were rated by theeighty-one managers and professionals.Two orthogonaldimensionswere delineatedas the best solution to the factor problem.The content of the items that loaded highon the factors led us to name one a "pro-fessional self-gratification" factor and theother an "organizational responsibility"factor. A theoretically significant findingof this solution was the high loading of thetwo items concernedwith "advancement nthe organization"and "pleasing organiza-tional superiors" on the factor that in-cluded all the professional-scientific tems.This was interpreted as meaning that thepersonnelin this laboratorydid not choosebetween organizational and professionalrewards,as has been suggested in the liter-ature, but that they varied in the extent towhich they sought after personal gratifica-

tions in general, whether these came fromthe organizationor the profession.There is, of course, the possibility thatthe organizationwe studied was a deviantcase and that the view of laboratories astending to be divided into two polarizedcamps is the correctone for most organiza-tions. This is a question for further em-pirical work. Our own hunch is that sociol-ogists might expect to find considerablevariationamong the populationof researchlaboratorieson the degree to which there isa cleavage between those who have a "pro-fessional orientation" and those who havean "organizational orientation." Some or-ganizations may be similar to the one wehave studied in which professionaland or-ganizational orientationsseem to be essen-tially independent. Other laboratoriesmaypresent a state of affairs more typical ofthat suggested by Shepard, Marcson, andPeter. If this is the case, however, then itshould point up the need for theories thatexplain the causes and consequences ofthese variations.

Louis C. GOLDBERGFRANK BAKERALBERT H. RUBENSTEIN

Johns Hopkins UniversityLehigh UniversityNorthwesternUniversity

Age Norms, Age Constraints, and Adult Socialization'In all societies, age is one of the basesfor the ascription of status and one of theunderlying dimensions by which social in-teraction is regulated. Anthropologistshavestudied age-grading n simple societies, and

sociologists in the tradition of Mannheimhave been interested in the relations be-tween generations; but little systematic at-tention has been given to the ways inwhich age groups relate to each other incomplex societies or to systems of normswhich refer to age-appropriatebehavior.Apromising group of theoretical paperswhich appeared twenty or more years agohave now become classics,2 but with the

1 Adapted from the paper "Age Norms and AgeConstraints in Adulthood," presented at the an-nual meeting of the American Sociological Asso-ciation, September, 1963. This study has beenfinanced by research grant No. 4200 from the Na-tional Institute of Mental Health (Bernice L. Neu-garten, principal investigator). The authors are in-debted to Mrs. Karol Weinstein for assistance inthe collection and treatment of the data.

2 Following the classic article by Karl Mann-heim ("The Problem of Generations," Essays onthe Sociology of Knowledge [New York: Oxford


3/9

RESEARCHOTES 711exceptions of a major contribution byEisenstadt and a provocative paper byBerger,3 ittle theoreticalor empiricalworkhas been done in this area in the two dec-ades that have intervened, and there hasbeen little development of what might becalled a sociology of age.The presentpaper deals with two relatedissues: first, with the degree of constraintperceived with regard to age norms thatoperate in American society; second, withadult socialization to those norms.4 Pre-liminary to presenting the data that bearupon these issues, however, a few com-ments regardingthe age-norm system andcertain illustrative observations gatheredearlier may help to provide context forthis study.

BACKGROUND CONCEPTS ANDOBSERVATIONS

Expectations regarding age-appropriatebehavior form an elaboratedand pervasivesystem of norms governing behavior andinteraction, a network of expectations that

is imbedded throughout the cultural fabricof adult life. There exists what might becalled a prescriptive timetable for the or-dering of major life events: a time in thelife span when men and women are ex-pected to marry, a time to raise children,atime to retire. This normative pattern isadhered to, more or less consistently, bymost persons in the society. Although theactual occurrences of major life events forboth men and women are influencedby avariety of life contingencies, and althoughthe norms themselves vary somewhat fromone group of persons to another, it caneasily be demonstrated that norms andactual occurrences are closely related. Agenorms and age expectations operate asprods and brakes upon behavior, in someinstances hastening an event, in others de-laying it. Men and women are aware notonly of the social clocks that operate invarious areas of their lives, but they areaware also of their own timing and readilydescribe themselves as "early," "late," or"on time" with regardto family and occu-pational events.

Age norms operate also in many lessclear-cut ways and in more peripheralareas of adult life as illustrated in suchphrases as "He's too old to be working sohard" or "She's too young to wear thatstyle of clothing" or "That's a strangething for a man of his age to say." Theconcern over age-appropriate behavior isfurther illustrated by colloquialisms suchas "Act your age!"-an exhortation madeto the adult as well as to the child in thissociety.Such norms, implicit or explicit, are sup-ported by a wide variety of sanctions rang-ing from those, on the one hand, that relatedirectly to the physical health of the trans-gressor to those, on the other hand, thatstress the deleterious effects of the trans-gressionon other persons. For example, thefifty-year-old man who insists on a strenu-ous athletic life is chastised for inviting animpairment of his own health; a middle-aged woman who dresses like an adolescentbrings into question her husband's good

University Press, 1952], pp. 276-322), these includeRalph Linton's discussion in The Study of Man(New York: Appleton-Century, 1936); Ruth Bene-dict, "Continuities and Discontinuities in CultureConditioning," Psychiatry, I (1938), 161-67;Kingsley Davis, "The Sociology of Parent-YouthConflict," American Sociological Review, V (1940),523-35; and Talcott Parsons, "Age and Sex in theSocial Structure of the United States," AmericanSociological Review, VII (October, 1942), 604-16.Anthropological classics include Arnold Van Gen-nep (1908), The Rites of Passage (Chicago: Uni-versity of Chicago Press, 1960); Robert H. Lowie(1920), Primitive Society (New York: Harper &Bros., 1961). More recently, A. H. J. Prins, EastAfrican Age-Class Systems (Groningen: J. B. Wol-ters, 1953) has presented a critical analysis of con-cepts and terms in use among anthropologists.

3S. N. Eisenstadt, From Generation to Genera-tion (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1956); and BennettM. Berger, "How Long Is a Generation?" BritishJournal of Sociology, XI (1960), 10-23.'With some exceptions, such as the work ofRobert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Struc-ture (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957), sociologists

have as yet given little attention to the broaderproblem of adult socialization.


4/9

712 THEAMERICANOURNALOF SOCIOLOGYjudgment as well as her own; a middle-aged couple who decide to have anotherchild are criticized because of the presumedembarrassment o their adolescent or mar-ried children. Whether affecting the self orothers, age norms and accompanying sanc-tions are relevant to a great variety ofadult behaviors; they are both systematicand pervasive in American society.

Despite the diversity of value patterns,life styles, and reference groups that in-fluence attitudes, a high degree of consen-sus can be demonstrated with regard toage-appropriate and age-linked behaviorsas illustrated by data shown in Table 1.The table shows how responses were dis-tributed when a representative sample ofmiddle-classmen and women aged forty toseventy5 were asked such questions as:"What do you think is the best age for aman to marry? . . . to finish school?""What age comes to your mind when youthink of a 'young' man? ... an 'old' man?""At what age do you think a man has the

most responsibilities?. . .accomplishes themost?"6The consensus indicated in the table isnot limited to personsresidingin a particu-lar region of the United States or to mid-dle-aged persons. Responses to the sameset of questions were obtained from othermiddle-class groups: one group of fiftymen and women aged twenty to thirty re-TABLE 1

CONSENSUS IN A MIDDLE-CLASS MIDDLE-AGED SAMPLE REGARDINGVARIOUS AGE-RELATED CHARACTERISTICS

PER CENTAGE RANGE WHO CONCURDESIGNATED AS

APPROPRIATEoR EXPECTED Men Women(N = 50) (N =43)

Best age for a man to marry ........................ 20-25 80 90Best age for a woman to marry ...................... 19-24 85 90When most people should become grandparents ........ 45-50 84 79Best age for most people to finish school and go to work. 20-22 86 82When most men should be settled on a career ......... 24-26 74 64When most men hold their top jobs ................. . 45-50 71 58When most people should be ready to retire ........... 60-65 83 86A young man ..................................... 18-22 84 83A middle-aged man................................. 40-50 86 75An old man ....................................... 65-75 75 57A young woman ................................... 18-24 89 88A middle-aged woman .............................. 40-50 87 77An old woman ..................................... 60-75 83 87When a man has the most responsibilities ............. 35-50 79 75When a man accomplishes most ...................... 40-50 82 71The prime of life for a man ....... ................. . 35-50 86 80When a woman has the most responsibilities ........... 25-40 93 91When a woman accomplishes most.................... 30-45 94 92A good-looking woman.............................. 20-35 92 82

' The sample was drawn by area-probabilitymethods (a 2 per cent listing of households inrandomly selected census tracts) with the resultingpool of cases then stratified by age, sex, and socio-economic status. Using the indexes of occupation,level of education, house type, and area of resi-dence, these respondents were all middle class. Thedata were gathered in connection with the KansasCity Studies of Adult Life, a research program car-ried out over a period of years under the directionof Robert J. Havighurst, William E. Henry, Ber-nice L. Neugarten, and other members of the Com-mittee on Human Development, University ofChicago.I For each item in the table, the percentages thatappear in the third and fourth columns obviouslyvary directly with the breadth of the age spanshown for that item. The age span shown was, in


5/9

RESEARCHOTES 713siding in a second midwesterncity, a groupof sixty Negro men and women aged fortyto sixty in a third midwestern city, and agroup of forty persons aged seventy toeighty in a New England community. Es-sentially the same patterns emerged n eachset of data.

THE PROBLEM AND THE METHODBased upon various sets of data such asthose illustrated in Table 1, the present in-vestigation proceeded on the assumptionthat age norms and age expectationsoperate in this society as a system of socialcontrol. For a great variety of behaviors,there is a span of years within which theoccurrence of a given behavior is regardedas appropriate. When the behavior occursoutside that span of years, it is regarded asinappropriateand is negatively sanctioned.The specific questions of this study werethese: How do membersof the society varyin their perception of the strictures in-volved in age norms, or in the degree ofconstraint they perceive with regard to age-appropriatebehaviors? To what extent arepersonal attitudes congruentwith the atti-tudes ascribed to the generalized other?Finally, using this congruence as an indexof socialization, can adult socialization toage norms be shown to occur as respond-ents themselves increase in age?The instrument.-A questionnaire wasconstructed in which the respondent wasasked on each of a series of items which of

three ages he would regard as appropriateor inappropriate, or which he would ap-prove or disapprove. As seen in the illus-trations below, the age spans being pro-posed were intended to be psychologicallyrather than chronologically equal in thesense that for some events a broadage spanis appropriate, for others, a narrow one.A womanwho feels it's all rightat her age towear a two-piecebathingsuit to the beach:

Whenshe's 45 (approveor disapprove)Whenshe's 30 (approveor disapprove)Whenshe's18 (approveor disapprove).Other illustrative items were:A womanwho decidesto have anotherchild(whenshe's 45, 37, 30).A manwho'swilling to move his familyfromonetownto another o get ahead n his com-pany (whenhe's45, 35, 25).A couplewho like to do the "Twist"(whenthey're55, 30, 20).A manwhostill prefers ivingwithhis parentsrather hangettinghis own apartmentwhenhe's 30, 25, 21).A couplewhomove acrosscountry o they canlivenear heirmarried hildrenwhen hey're

40, 55, 70).The thirty-nine items finally selectedafter careful pretesting are divided equal-ly into three types: those that relate tooccupational career; those that relate tothe family cycle; and a broader groupingthat refer to recreation, appearance, andconsumption behaviors. In addition, theitems were varied systematically with re-gard to their applicability to three periods:

young adulthood, middle age, and old age.In general, then, the questionnairepre-sents the respondentwith a relatively bal-anced selection of adult behaviors whichwere known from pretesting to be success-ful in evoking age discriminations.A meansof scoring was devised whereby the scorereflects the degreeof refinementwith whichthe respondent makes age discriminations.For instance, the respondentwho approvesof a couple dancing the "Twist" if they aretwenty, but who disapproves if they arethirty, is placing relative age constraint

turn, the one selected by the investigators o pro-duce the most accuratereflectionof the consensusthat existed n the data.The way in whichdegreeof consensuswas cal-culatedcan be illustratedon "Best age for a manto marry."Individualsusually responded o thisitem in terms of specificyears, such as "20" or"22,"or in terms of narrowranges,suchas "from20 to 23." These responseswere counted as con-sensus within the five-year age range shown inTable 1, on the grounds that the respondentswere concurring hat the best age was somewherebetweentwenty and twenty-five. A response uchas "18to 20"or "anytimein the 20's"was outsidethe range regardedas consensusand was thereforeexcluded.


6/9

714 THEAMERICANOURNALOF SOCIOLOGYupon this item of behavior as comparedtoanother respondent who approves the"Twist" both at age twenty and at agethirty, but not at age fifty-five. The higherthe score, the more the respondentregardsage as a salient dimension across a widevariety of behaviors and the more con-straint he accepts in the operation of agenorms.7The sample.-A quota sampleof middle-class respondents was obtained in whichlevel of education, occupation, and area ofresidence were used to determine socialclass. The sample is divided into six age-sex cells: fifty men and fifty women agedtwenty to thirty, one hundredmen and onehundred women aged thirty to fifty-five,and fifty men and fifty women aged sixty-five and over. Of the four hundred re-spondents, all but a few in the older groupwere or had been married.The great ma-jority were parents of one or morechildren.The only known bias in the sampleoccurs in the older group (median age formen is sixty-nine; for womenseventy-two)where most individuals were members of

Senior Citizens clubs and where, as a re-sult, the subsample is biased in the direc-tion of better health and greater com-munity involvement than can be expectedfor the universe of persons in this agerange. While Senior Citizens is a highlyage-conscious and highly age-graded asso-ciation from the perspective of the widersociety, there is no evidence that the seven-ty-year-old who joins is any more or anyless aware of age discriminations than isthe seventy-year-old who does not join.8The older groupwas no more or less homo-geneous with regard to religiousaffiliation,ethnic background, or indexes of socialclass than were the other two age groupsin this sample.Administration.-To investigate thesimilarity between personal attitudes andattitudes ascribed to the generalizedother,the questionnaire was first administeredwith instructions to give "your personalopinions" about each of the items; thenthe respondent was given a second copy ofthe questionnaire and asked to respond inthe way he believed "most people" wouldrespond.97 For each item of behavior, one of the ages beingproposed is scored as the "appropriate" age; an-other, the "marginal"; and the third, the "in-appropriate" (the age at which the behavior isusually proscribed on the basis of its transgressionof an age norm). A response which expresses dis-approval of only the "inappropriate" age is scored1, while a response which expresses disapproval ofnot only the "inappropriate" but also the "mar-ginal" age receives a score of 3. The total possiblescore is 117, a score that could result only if therespondent were perceiving maximum age con-straint with regard to every one of the thirty-nineitems. A response which expresses approval or dis-approval of all three ages for a given behavior isscored zero, since for that respondent the item isnot age-related, at least not within the age rangebeing proposed.The "appropriate" age for each item had pre-viously been designated by the investigators onthe basis of previous findings such as those illus-trated on Table 1 of this report. That the designa-tions were generally accurate was corroborated bythe fact that when the present instrument was ad-ministered to the four hundred respondents de-scribed here, more than 90 per cent of respondents

on successive test items checked "approve" for the"appropriate" one of the three proposed ages.

8 On the other hand, members of Senior Citizensare more likely to be activists and to regard them-selves as younger in outlook than persons who donot join such groups. If this is true, the age differ-ences to be described in the following sections ofthis paper might be expected to be even moremarked in future studies in which samples aremore representative.'The problem being studied here relates to prob-lems of conformity, deviation, and personal versuspublic attitudes. As is true of other empirical re-search in these areas, the terms used here are notaltogether satisfactory, in part because of the lackof uniform terminology in this field. For example,while age norms are in some respects related to"attitudinal" and "doctrinal" conformity as posedby Robert K. Merton ("Social Conformity, De-viation, and Opportunity Structures: A Commenton the Contributions of Dubin and Cloward,"American Sociological Review, XXIV [1959], 177-189), these data do not fit that analytical frame-work because age norms are less clear-cut than thenorms Merton discusses, and the realms of at-titudinal and doctrinal conformity are less pre-scribed.Similarly, the projection of personal attitudesupon the generalized other has been studied by


7/9


8/9

716 THEAMERICANOURNALOF SOCIOLOGYhere, on each one of the thirty-ninebehav-ioral items some 80 per cent or more of allrespondents made age discriminationswhen asked for "most people's opinions."In other words, general consensus existsthat behaviors describedin the test instru-ment are age-related. On the other hand,respondents uniformly attributed greaterstrictureto age norms in the mindsof otherpeople than in their own minds. This dif-ferencewas reflectedin the scores for everyrespondent as well as in the mean scores.These findings indicate that there is anoverriding norm of "liberal-mindedness"regarding age, whereby men and womenconsistently maintain that they hold moreliberalviews than do others. In many waysthis situation is reminiscent of the phenom-enon of pluralistic ignorance, in which norespondent'spersonal view of the attitudesof others is altogether correct.10In otherways, however, this may be a situation inwhich respondents tend to exaggerate, ra-ther than to misconstrue, the opinions ofothers.A young person who says, in effect,"I am not strict about age norms,but otherpeople are," is indeed correct that otherpeople are stricter than he is (as shown inthese data on "personalopinions"); but heexaggerates, for other people are not sostrict as he thinks. Similarly, when an oldperson says, in effect, "I think this is thenorm, and other people think so, too," heis also partly correct that other old peopleagreewith him, but he ignoreswhat youngpeople think.These partial misconceptions have atleast two implications: first, when a per-son's own opinions differ from the normshe encounters, he may exaggerate the dif-ferences and place the norms even furtheraway from his own opinions than is war-ranted. Second, it may be that in consider-ing age norms, the individual gives undueweight to the opinions of persons who areolder or stricter than himself and ignoresthe opinions of others who are younger or

less strict. In both instances, the normimage is not the average of all opinions en-countered but the image of the "ideal"norm. In the case of age norms, the "ideal"normsmay well be those held by older per-sons.The findingsof this study are also of in-terest when viewed within the context ofadult socialization. Cross-sectional data ofthis type must be interpretedwith cautionsince the differences between age groupsmay reflecthistoricalchanges in values andattitudes as much as changes that accom-pany increasedage itself. Still, the findingsseem congruent with a theory of adult so-cialization: that personalbelief in the rele-vance and validity of social norms in-creases through the adult life span andthat, in this instance, as the individualages he becomes increasingly aware of agediscriminations in adult behavior and ofthe system of social sanctions that operatewith regard to age appropriateness.Themiddle-aged and the old seem to havelearned that age is a reasonable criterionby which to evaluate behavior, that to be"off-time"with regard to life events or toshow other age-deviant behavior bringswith it social and psychological sequelaethat cannot be disregarded.In the young,especially the young male, this view isonly partially accepted; and there seemsto be a certain denial of age as a valid di-mension by which to judge behavior.This age-related difference in point ofview is perhaps well illustrated by the re-sponse of a twenty-year-old who, whenasked what he thought of marriagebetweenseventeen-year-olds, said, "I suppose itwould be all right if the boy got a goodjob, and if they loved each other. Whynot? It isn't age that's the importantthing." A forty-five-year-old,by contrast,said, "At that age, they'd be foolish.Neither one of them is settled enough. Aboy on his own, at seventeen, couldn'tsup-port a wife, and he certainly couldn't sup-port children. Kids who marry that youngwill suffer for it later."Along with increasedpersonal conviction"Floyd IH.Allport, Social Psychology (Boston:Houghton Mifflin Co., 1924).


9/9

RESEARCHOTES 717regarding the validity of age norms goes adecreased tendency to perceive the gen-eralized other as restrictive. The over-allconvergence in the data, a convergencewhich we have interpreted in terms ofadult socialization, may reflect status anddeference relationships between age groupsin American society, where high status isafforded the middle-aged and where socialenforcementof norms may generally be saidto be vested in the mature rather than theyoung. The young person, having only re-cently graduated from the age-segregatedworld of adolescents, and incompletely so-cialized to adult values, seems to perceivea psychological distance between himselfand "most people" and to feel only partial-ly identified with the adult world. This isevidenced by the fact that when asked,"Whom do you have in mind when youthink of 'most people'?" young adultstended to answer,"Olderpeople."Only for old people is there a high de-gree of congruence between personal opin-ions and the opinions ascribed to others.This may reflect not only the accumulatedeffects of adult socialization and the inter-nalization of age norms, but also a certaincrystallization of attitudes in the aged.Older respondents volunteered the mostvehement and the most opinionated com-ments as they moved from item to item, asif to underscore the fact that their atti-tudes with regard to age and age-relatedbehaviors are highly charged emotionally.

Under these circumstances, there is likelyto be a blurring of distinctions betweenwhat the respondent himself regards asright and what he thinks other peoplewould "naturally"regard as right.With regard to sex differences, the factthat young women perceive greater con-straints regardingage-appropriatebehaviorthan do young men is generally congruentwith other evidence of differences n social-ization for women and men in our society.Young women are probably more highlysensitized to the imperatives of age normsthan are young men, given the relativelymore stringent expectations regarding ageat marriagefor women.It should be recalled that the presentstudy is based upon quota samples ofmiddle-class respondents and that accord-ingly the findings cannot be readily gen-eralized to other samples.Nevertheless, thefindingssupport the interpretation that agenorms are salient over a wide variety ofadult behaviors and support the view thatadult socialization produces increasinglyclear perception of these norms as well asan increasing awareness that the normsprovide constraints upon adult behavior.

BERNICE L. NEUGARTENJOANW. MOOREJOHN C. LOWE

Committeeon Human DevelopmentUniversity of Chicago

On Reporting Rates of IntermarriageAfter reviewing all of the availableliterature on mate selection, particularlyon intermarriage,and after conducting alengthy secondary analysis of survey datafrom the University of Michigan's DetroitArea Study, the writer believes that severalpoints should be put into writing in regardto the reporting and interpretingof ratesof intermarriage.They are, in brief: (1)Let rates based on marriages always bedistinguished from rates based on indi-

viduals. (2) Let group size be acknowl-edged as operating through mathematicalnecessity when it is found to be inverselyrelated to intermarriage rates. (3) Oneshould recognize inevitable differences be-tween ethnic and religious intermarriagerates in evaluatingthe "triple melting pot"hypothesis. (4) When possible, let theratio of a group's actual rate of inter-marriage to its "expected" intermarriagerate be reported.

Documents

Age Norms, Age Constraints, And Adult Socialization