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This article examines a half-century of trends in family attitudes and beliefs in the United States, including attitudes toward gender, marriage, childbearing, cohabitation, sex outside marriage, divorce, and same-sex relations. These trends are viewed through the lens of developmental idealism. We also describe how the developmental idealism framework applies to Western contexts generally and the United States specifically. We trace family attitudes from the 1960s through 2018 using four data sources: the Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children, Monitoring the Future, the General Social Survey, and the International Social Survey Programme. We find profound and largely consistent changes in Americans' attitudes. We argue these changes can be understood as the expansion of developmental idealism in the United States. Americans increasingly endorsed family attributes long understood as modern under developmental idealism, as well as attributes more recently viewed as modern through extensions of freedom and equality. At the same time, sizable majorities remained committed to marriage and children. While Americans increasingly supported all individuals' freedom to choose among a diversity of family behaviors, most continued to view marriage and children favorably in their own lives.

This paper examines the reliability and stability of developmental idealism (DI) measures in Nepal. DI is a set of cultural schemas that contains beliefs and values favoring modern societies and families over traditional ones and that views modern families as causes and effects of modern societies. It also views the world as dynamic, with change from traditionality toward modernity. Earlier studies have shown that DI has been disseminated widely internationally, but provide little evidence concerning whether individual views of DI can be reliably measured or the extent to which such views are stable across time. We estimate the reliability and stability of DI measures using panel data collected in Nepal. Our results indicate substantial reliability, equal or nearly equal to the reliability of standard value and belief items measured in general American surveys. There is also considerable stability of DI views across our study interval from 2008 to 2011.

We examine how ordinary citizens in Bulgaria view the developmental levels of European countries and certain states outside of Europe. Our research is motivated by the understanding that scholars and policy makers have for centuries used developmental hierarchies to characterize countries and that this perception of differential development has shaped interactions among different groups, countries and regions. We expect that views of such developmental hierarchies and models have great potential for influencing demographic and family behavior and political and cultural identities of ordinary people. Using data from a 2009 survey in Bulgaria we document that developmental hierarchies are widely perceived in Bulgaria, but are distributed differentially by age, education, and degree of urbanization. We also consider internal mechanisms underlying this hierarchical understanding of development and how hierarchical understandings may be related to national identities.

In a comparative framework this paper examines how ordinary citizens in Bulgaria view the developmental levels of European countries and certain states outside of Europe. It analyzes how Bulgarians scale countries on development and how that scale is related both to historical discourses about a civilizational slope from east to west in Europe, and to contemporary linear measurements of societal development and economic well-being. The paper also assesses what internal mechanisms this hierarchical understanding of development may have and how it may be related to national identities. We also consider how the views of the developmental hierarchy vary across subgroups of Bulgarian respondents. The empirical data for this paper come from a 2009 nationally representative survey of Bulgarian adults. Each respondent was asked to rate European countries and certain countries outside Europe on their levels of development. We analyze how ordinary Bulgarians rate countries on development and consider whether their assessments form a descending slope from west to east. We also link the assessments of ordinary Bulgarians to assessments of development made by outside agencies such as the United Nations and to GDP per Capita in order to see how the ratings of international organizations and the evaluation of ordinary Bulgarians are related.

This paper investigates the extent to which people in five Middle Eastern countries endorse key beliefs of developmental idealism that associate development with freedom, democracy, and human rights. Developmental idealism is a set of beliefs concerning the desirability of development, the methods for achieving it, and its consequences. The literature suggests that these beliefs have diffused worldwide among elites and lay citizens and posits that when such beliefs are disseminated they become forces for social and economic changes. Although developmental idealism research has primarily examined family and demographic issues, developmental idealism has tremendous potential to influence other aspects of society. This paper extends knowledge by considering societal aspects not addressed previously in the developmental idealism literature: personal freedom, democracy, and human rights. Using survey data from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, we investigate how publics of these countries associate development with these elements. We find that majorities believe development brings greater personal freedom, democracy, and human rights. Conversely, the data show that in four of the countries majorities believe more personal freedom contributes to development. These findings provide support for the idea that developmental idealism beliefs concerning freedom, democracy, and human rights have diffused to lay publics in these five Middle Eastern countries. We also find evidence of uniquely Islamic developmental models; a significant proportion of people in these countries believe that more religion will bring more development.

In this paper we examine the views of ordinary people in Hungary and Romania about developmental trajectories and developmental hierarchies. Our work extends research on perception of global hierarchies as we include the views of ordinary people in the countries of Hungary and Romania. In addition, our research makes a unique contribution to the development and developmental hierarchy literature by examining, for the first time, how individuals define development. Although the main focus of this paper is the developmental views of Hungarians and Romanians, at times we add to our discussion results from a survey in Bulgaria and another from Albania. In this paper we conclude that developmental models are widespread among ordinary people in Hungary and Romania; we also find that the South-East European region does show some specificities in terms of the over- and under-positioning of certain countries relative to the dominant international rating system. China and, to a lesser degree, Russia were over-positioned by respondents relative to the developmental index scores of those countries. Within the region, unlike Bulgarians and Albanians, who severely underrated themselves, Hungarian and Romanian respondents put themselves in a middle position on the developmental scale. Concerning developmental items with some differences between the two countries, our data show that the economy is the most important development criterion in the minds of Hungarians and Romanians, followed by democracy, science and technology, and education.