An important change occurred in African American family structure during the era of racialized managerial capitalism: a major increase in the fraction of men and women in the 20s and 30s who were never-married. A fall in marriage-eligible men is a major factor responsible for this change. As per the Darity-Myers index of African American male marginalization, there will be an increase in the fraction of marriage-eligible men (and, therefore, increased marriage) with an increase in their earnings and employment, reducing premature deaths and disability, increasing college enrollment, reducing contact with the criminal legal system and reducing incentives for criminal behavior, and reducing premarital births and dissolution of unions when children are present. This perspective suggests that it is changes in economic well-being that cause changes in family structure, not the reverse. Family functioning is different from family structure. The empirical data suggests that, on average, African American families have strong family functioning.

In the 1870s and 1880s, some of Japan’s leading intellectuals and modernizers discussed human rights, reintroduced the binary difference between male and female, and declared motherhood the core principle of women’s nature. As gender displaced status as the primary system of social and legal classification, women began adopting the language of rights and representing themselves in public. By the beginning of the twentieth century, women forcefully entered and shaped a range of debates. Chapter 2, “Controlling Reproduction and Motherhood,” discusses women’s struggle to both define motherhood for themselves and take control of reproduction – the debate about motherhood being closely tied to the quest for legalizing abortions. Notably, this demand was increasingly at odds with the country’s advancing imperialism, which relied on rapid population growth. The end of the Japanese empire constituted a major rupture within the question of reproductive control, ultimately leading to today’s effects of rapid population decline and the lack of will among the young generation to have babies.

Demography and life-history data provide key information for our interpretation of the evolution and ecology of a species. Gathering reliable data can be a challenge, especially in species with long life spans such as the great apes. Only long-term field projects can compile trustworthy demography data, allowing us to access life-history measures. Here, we present the demography of four communities of wild chimpanzees (North, South, Middle and East Groups) located in Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire, following observations of individual chimpanzees for almost 40 years. We will provide demography data on birth, mortality, community size, age and sex ratios, among others, and translate these into life-history measures related to reproductive strategies (age of mother at birth of first infant, interbirth interval, etc.) and fitness (reproductive success, longevity, etc.). A comparison with available data from other long-term chimpanzee study sites will be made and we will discuss the life-history adaptations of Taï chimpanzees to the challenges they are facing.