| Sumario: | This paper examines how adolescents' values may be shaped by the immediate social context with special reference to social class and rural urban background. The locus of study is Taiwan, a society with drastically declining birth rates in recent years. It is hypothesized that the value adolescents place on having children (or the positive value) and not having children (or the negative value) are accounted for by individual, familial and social contextual factors. Data are taken from an island-wide sample of first-year senior high students. A field survey was administered from winter of 2005 to spring of 2006. The analysis shows that three dimensions can be extracted from both positive and negative values toward having children: with emotional value rated the most important, followed by physical and social value. Results indicate that expected effects from different social class and rural-urban background vary and are salient for explaining physical and social value. In addition, social contextual factors and individual factors are shown to contribute to the formation of positive value of children among Taiwanese adolescents. The importance of social context in adolescents' value formation with regard to the value of children is thus supported. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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