Search

This paper explores whether and how parents' attitudes toward the spanking of children have changed over the last 30 years, a period when parents' use of corporal punishment declined precipitously in the U.S. We compare these trends across parents' socioeconomic status (SES) and region of the country to identify whether shifts in attitudes toward these practices parallel documented shifts in their use by SES and region. We draw data from the General Social Surveys (GSS) from 1986 through 2016, which asked respondents how much they agree children sometimes need "a good, hard spanking." We compare responses among parents at the 80th (high-SES) and 20th (low-SES) percentiles of the income and education distributions, and between parents in southern versus non-southern states, controlling for child and parent age and parent gender. In non-southern regions, parents' support for corporal punishment declined over time, especially among high-SES parents, whereas in the South parents' support for corporal punishment remained stably high over time across the socioeconomic distribution. These findings imply a distinct cultural perspective on corporal punishment in the South, one that may help explain the disproportionate maintenance of the practice in schools and provide a potent target for policy and program interventions to reduce its use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, developmental psychologists Ariel Kalil and Rebecca Ryan examine the relation between parenting practices and socioeconomic gaps in child outcomes. They document substantial differences between richer and poorer families, including growing gaps in parental engagement and time use. These gaps matter: the fact that children born to lower-income, less-educated parents are less likely to spend quality time with their parents only compounds their relative economic disadvantage. Evidence suggests that disadvantaged parents want to do many of the same things that higher-income parents do, such as reading to their children and engaging them in educational experiences like trips to parks and museums. But they're nonetheless less likely to do those things. The authors consider a number of explanations for this discrepancy. One important contributing factor, Kalil and Ryan write, appears to be financial strain and family stress, both of which can impede parents' emotional and cognitive functioning in ways that make it harder for them to interact with young children in intellectually stimulating and emotionally nurturing ways. The authors conclude with a discussion of the types of policies and programs that might narrow income-based parenting gaps. They find encouraging evidence that relatively low-cost, light-touch behavioral interventions could help parents overcome the cognitive biases that may prevent them from using certain beneficial parenting practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's exposure to book reading is thought to be an influential input into positive cognitive development. Yet there is little empirical research identifying whether it is reading time per se, or other factors associated with families who read, such as parental education or children's reading skill, that improves children's achievement. Using data on 4,239 children ages 0-13 of the female respondents of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study applies two different methodologies to identify the causal impact of mother-child reading time on children's achievement scores by controlling for several confounding child and family characteristics. The results show that a 1 SD increase in mother-child reading time increases children's reading achievement by 0.80 SDs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We test whether high-quality digital apps and analog math materials could increase child skills and whether the impact is enhanced with text messages aimed at managing parents' behavioral biases. • We find that providing 1) a digital tablet with math apps, and 2) analog math materials with weekly text messages to manage parents' present bias increased children's math skill by around 20% of the control group's standard deviation. • We explore a potential mechanism where the increase in parent engagement leads to an increase in child math skills. Math skill in early childhood is a key predictor of future academic achievement. Parental engagement in math learning contributes to the growth of children's math skills during this period. To help boost parent-child engagement in math activities and children's math skills, we conducted an RCT lasting 12 weeks with 758 low-income preschoolers (3-5 years old) and their primary caregivers. Parents were randomized into five groups: 1) a control group, and groups that received 2) a digital tablet with math apps for children; 3) analog math materials for parents to use with children, 4) analog math materials with weekly text messages to manage parents' present bias; and 5) analog math materials with weekly text messages to increase parents' growth mindset. Relative to the control group, neither the analog math materials alone nor the analog materials with growth mindset messages increased child math skills during the intervention period. However, the analog math materials combined with messaging to manage present bias and the digital tablet with math apps increased child math skills by about 0.20 standard deviations (p=.10) measured six months after the intervention. These two treatments also significantly increased parents' self-reported time engaged in math activities with their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Income inequality and the achievement test score gap between high- and low-income children increased dramatically in the United States beginning in the 1970s. This article investigates the demographic (family income, mother's education, family size, two-parent family structure, and age of mother at birth) underpinnings of the growing income-based gap in schooling using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Across 31 cohorts, we find that increases in the income gap between high- and low-income children account for approximately three-quarters of the increasing gap in completed schooling, one-half of the gap in college attendance, and one-fifth of the gap in college graduation. We find no consistent evidence of increases in the estimated associations between parental income and children's completed schooling. Increasing gaps in the two-parent family structures of high- and low-income families accounted for relatively little of the schooling gap because our estimates of the (regression-adjusted) associations between family structure and schooling were surprisingly small for much of our accounting period. On the other hand, increasing gaps in mother's age at the time of birth accounts for a substantial portion of the increasing schooling gap: mother's age is consistently predictive of children's completed schooling, and the maternal age gap for children born into low- and high-income families increased considerably over the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns over the perceived negative impacts of computers on social development among children are prevalent but largely uninformed by plausibly causal evidence. We provide the first test of this hypothesis using a large-scale randomized control experiment in which more than one thousand children attending grades 6-10 across 15 different schools and 5 school districts in California were randomly given computers to use at home. Children in the treatment group are more likely to report having a social networking site, but also report spending more time communicating with their friends and interacting with their friends in person. There is no evidence that computer ownership displaces participation in after-school activities such as sports teams or clubs or reduces school participation and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resident fathers have increased the time they spend in active childrearing in recent decades. This paper examines how fathers' time in childrearing is associated with relationship dissolution. We use longitudinal survey and time-diary data on young children from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC; n = 5,604). We investigate mothers' and fathers' parenting time, alone and with each other, in a wide variety of activities. Controlling for a rich set of demographic characteristics and the quality of the parental relationship, we find that the sole correlate of parental relationship dissolution is shared time spent in family meals. This correlation holds only for shared family mealtime in which families are not simultaneously watching television. Further analysis suggests that high-quality shared family mealtimes may lower the risk of relationship dissolution by enhancing mothers' perceptions of marital quality and relationship happiness and reducing maternal depressive symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the employment, academic achievement, and health of children living in poor families in the U.S. It offers the average rate of early childhood poverty in the country as revealed by the U.S. Census Bureau. The author also reflects on the possible mechanisms that links to early poverty as well as its outcomes in the labour market and adult health.

Using data from the 2003-2007 American Time Use Surveys (ATUS), we compare mothers' ( N = 6,640) time spent in four parenting activities across maternal education and child age subgroups. We test the hypothesis that highly educated mothers not only spend more time in active child care than less-educated mothers but also alter the composition of that time to suit children's developmental needs more than less-educated mothers. Results support this hypothesis: not only do highly educated mothers invest more time in basic care and play when youngest children are infants or toddlers than when children are older, but differences across education groups in basic care and play time are largest among mothers with infants or toddlers; by contrast, highly educated mothers invest more time in management activities when children are 6 to 13 years old than when children are younger, and differences across education groups in management are largest among mothers with school-aged children. These patterns indicate that the education gradient in mothers' time with children is characterized by a 'developmental gradient.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data spanning 1996-2009 from multiple panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation, this study investigates children's (average age 8.5 years) physical health, dental visits, and doctor contact among low-income children ( n = 46,148) in immigrant versus native households. Immigrant households are further distinguished by household citizenship and immigration status. The findings show that children residing in households with non-naturalized citizen parents, particularly those with a nonpermanent resident parent, experience worse health and less access to care even when controlling for important demographic, socioeconomic, and health insurance variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from five waves of the Women's Employment Survey (WES; 1997-2003), we examine the links between low-income mothers' employment patterns and the emotional behavior and academic progress of their children. We find robust and substantively important linkages between several different dimensions of mothers' employment experiences and child outcomes. The pattern of results is similar across empirical approaches-including ordinary least squares and child fixed-effect models, with and without an extensive set of controls. Children exhibit fewer behavior problems when mothers work and experience job stability (relative to children whose mothers do not work). In contrast, maternal work accompanied by job instability is associated with significantly higher child behavior problems (relative to employment in a stable job). Children whose mothers work full-time and/or have fluctuating work schedules also exhibit significantly higher levels of behavior problems. However, full-time work has negative consequences for children only when it is in jobs that do not require cognitive skills. Such negative consequences are completely offset when this work experience is in jobs that require the cognitive skills that lead to higher wage growth prospects. Finally, fluctuating work schedules and full-time work in non-cognitively demanding jobs are each strongly associated with the probability that the child will repeat a grade or be placed in special education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

- There were roughly 4 million children of undocumented parents in the United States in 2008. This article describes the effects that parental undocumented status can have on developmental contexts experienced in early childhood, before formal school entry. It focuses on early childhood as a crucial but still overlooked period for the study of children in immigrant families, a developmental stage when foundational cognitive and social skills are developing and in which social and economic disadvantage has particularly potent effects. Moreover, 91% of children under 6 with at least 1 undocumented parent are themselves U.S. citizens, which highlights the role of parental documentation status in affecting contexts of development that children may have access to but cannot select themselves. This article focuses on 3 sets of developmental contexts that may be sensitive to documentation status of parents: immediate postmigration contexts, in areas of legal, local enforcement policy, and neighborhood characteristics; everyday social settings, including program use, housing quality, and work conditions; and family processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the link between divorced nonresident fathers' proximity and children's long-run outcomes, using high-quality data from Norwegian population registers. We follow (from birth to young adulthood) each of 15,992 children born into married households in Norway in the years 1975-1979 whose parents divorced during his or her childhood. We observe the proximity of the child to his or her father in each year following the divorce and link proximity to educational and economic outcomes for the child in young adulthood, controlling for a wide range of observable characteristics of the parents and the child. Our results show that closer proximity to the father following a divorce has, on average, a modest negative association with offspring's outcomes in young adulthood. The negative associations are stronger among children of highly educated fathers. Complementary Norwegian survey data show that highly educated fathers report more post-divorce conflict with their ex-wives as well as more contact with their children (measured in terms of the number of nights that the child spends at the father's house). Consequently, the father's relocation to a more distant location following the divorce may shelter the child from disruptions in the structure of the child's life as they split time between households and/or from post-divorce interparental conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We aim to understand why blacks are significantly less likely than whites to perpetuate their middle-class status across generations. To do so, we focus on the potentially different associations between parental job loss and youth's educational attainment in black and white middle-class families. We use data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), following those children 'born' into the survey between 1968 and 1979 and followed through age 21. We conduct multivariate regression analyses to test the association between parental job loss during childhood and youth's educational attainment by age 21. We find that parental job loss is associated with a lesser likelihood of obtaining any postsecondary education for all offspring, but that the association for blacks is almost three times as strong. A substantial share of the differential impact of job loss on black and white middle-class youth is explained by race differences in household wealth, long-run measures of family income, and, especially, parental experience of long-term unemployment. These findings highlight the fragile economic foundation of the black middle class and suggest that intergenerational persistence of class status in this population may be highly dependent on the avoidance of common economic shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising rates of nonmarital childbirth in the United States have resulted in a new family type, the fragile family. Such families, which include cohabiting couples as well as single mothers, experience significantly higher rates of poverty and material hardship than their married counterparts. Ariel Kalil and Rebecca Ryan summarize the economic challenges facing mothers in fragile families and describe the resources, both public and private, that help them meet these challenges. The authors explain that the economic fragility of these families stems from both mothers' and fathers' low earnings, which result from low education levels, as well as from physical, emotional, and mental health problems. Mothers in fragile families make ends meet in many ways. The authors show that various public programs, particularly those that provide in-kind assistance, do successfully lessen economic hardship in fragile families. Single mothers also turn to private sources of support—friends, family, boyfriends—for cash and in-kind assistance. But though these private safety nets are essential to many mothers' economic survival, according to the authors, private safety nets are not always consistent and dependable. Thus, assistance from private sources may not fundamentally improve mothers' economic circumstances. Policy makers, say Kalil and Ryan, must recognize that with rates of nonmarital childbirth at their current level, and potentially rising still, the fragile family is likely an enduring fixture in this country. It is thus essential to strengthen policies that both support these families' economic self-sufficiency and alleviate their hardship during inevitable times of economic distress. The most important first step, they say, is to strengthen the public safety net, especially such in-kind benefits as food stamps, Medicaid, housing, and child care. A next step would be to bolster community-based programs that can provide private financial support, such as emergency cash assistance, child care, and food aid, when mothers cannot receive it from their own private networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Research examining the effects of welfare dynamics on children’s development has provided little information to date on the experiences of immigrant children. Using longitudinal data collected during the period of welfare reform (1995–1999; the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, PHDCN), this study investigates whether welfare leaving is associated with changes in preschool-aged children’s (n =550) physical health (i.e., general health status, sick days, respiratory illness and emergency room visits) over time, and whether these associations differ by parents’ nativity status. We find that children of immigrant welfare leavers fare significantly worse in terms of their health than their peers in either native leaver families, or immigrant families who continued to receive assistance. Associations are robust to the inclusion of a wide range of control variables including children’s initial health status, family demographic characteristics, qualities of the home environment, and indicators of parents’ physical and mental health. Negative impacts of welfare leaving on children’s health appear to be concentrated among immigrants who have multiple “barriers” to program participation (i.e., limited English proficiency, fewer years residing in the US, households with no citizen parent, and self-reported experiences of discrimination). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Objectives. We estimated associations between job insecurity and change over time in the physical and psychological health of older adult men and women. Methods. We conducted secondary analyses of longitudinal data from men and women ( N = 190) born between 1935 and 1952 in the Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study. We used multivariate regression techniques to test the association of job insecurity with changes in physical health (self-reported global health, resting blood pressure, and urinary catecholamines [epinephrine]) and psychological health (depressive symptoms, hostility, loneliness, and personal stress). We controlled for individual characteristics and baseline measures of the outcomes. Results. Men who experience job insecurity rate themselves in significantly poorer physical health and have higher blood pressure and higher levels of urinary catecholamines compared with men who do not experience job insecurity and women who do. Women who experience job insecurity show higher depressive symptoms and report more hostility, loneliness, and personal stress compared with women who do not experience job insecurity and men who do. Discussion. The correlation between job insecurity and health is different in men and women but may be clinically significant in both populations and is a potentially important threat to older adults ’ health and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reports on the significant effects of unemployment towards the well-being of families and children in Australia. It discusses the potential impact and the economic consequences of unemployment. It notes the influence of parental job loss towards child development and states that it affects the children's educational attainment. It stresses that unemployment increases the likelihood of divorce, negatively affects families' economic security, physical and mental health. Moreover, additional information on the negative impact of job loss on families are also given.

We use a lifecourse framework to examine how the "new risk economy" has left middle-age professionals, managers and executives more vulnerable to job loss and unemployment despite high levels of human capital. Using in-depth qualitative data from 77 recently-unemployed white-collar workers, we examine perceptions of macro-economic forces and their implications for respondents' career-recovery plans and expectations for their own and their children's future career pathways. We find that most respondents attributed their job loss to factors associated with globalization and used coping strategies that involved adapting a "free-agent" mentality in the face of declining employer loyalty and deprofessionalization to manage perceptions of age bias. Respondents also make mastering the "new risk economy" a developmental goal for themselves and their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation, we examine 4476 school-age children in 2569 families with matched pairs of married fathers and mothers to study children’s academic progress as a function of fathers’ and mothers’ employment circumstances, with a particular focus on involuntary employment separations. We draw on weekly work histories, collected at 4-month intervals, to characterize parental employment circumstances over a two-year period. Results find no significant associations between mothers’ employment experiences and children’s academic progress, even in households where mothers earn more than fathers. In contrast, fathers’ experience of involuntary employment separations is associated with children’s academic progress. On average, fathers’ experience of involuntary employment separations is associated with a higher likelihood of children’s grade repetition and suspension/expulsion from school. However, subgroup analyses reveal this association only in households where mothers earn more than fathers. We conclude that the adverse impacts of fathers’ involuntary employment separations in two-parent families have less to do with income losses than with family dynamics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study investigates how perceptions of teacher support and achievement goal structures in the school environment correlate with school engagement, and whether depressive symptoms mediate or moderate this association, among 64 low-income teenage mothers. Controlling for prior grades, perceptions of teacher support correlate with higher levels of positive affect and lower levels of negative affect about school. Perceptions of an emphasis on mastery goals in the school environment correlate with higher levels of positive affect and lower levels of school alienation. In contrast, perceptions of an emphasis on performance goals in the school environment correlate with higher levels of negative affect and school alienation. Perceptions of performance goals are especially detrimental to teenage mothers with higher levels of depressive symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two forces motivate this special section, "New Methods for New Questions in Developmental Psychology." First are recent developments in social science methodology and the increasing availability of those methods in common software packages. Second, at the same time psychologists' understanding of developmental phenomena has continued to grow. At their best, these developments in theory and methods work in tandem, fueling each other. Newer methods make it possible for scientists to better test their ideas; better ideas lead methodologists to techniques that better reflect, capture, and quantify the underlying processes. The articles in this special section represent a sampling of these new methods and new questions. The authors describe common themes in these articles and identify barriers to future progress, such as the lack of data sharing by and analytical training for developmentalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses longitudinal data from approximately 2,000 low-income families participating in the national evaluation of the Comprehensive Child Development Program to examine the associations between preschool children’s living arrangements and their cognitive achievement and emotional adjustment. The analysis distinguishes families in which children live only with their mothers from children who live in biological father, blended, and multigenerational households. Linkages are examined separately for White, Black, and Latino children. Fixed effects regression techniques reveal few significant associations between living arrangements and child development. These findings suggest that substantial diversity exists in the developmental contexts among children living in the same family structure. Policies seeking to change the living arrangements of low-income children may do little to improve child well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Using five waves of data from a study of former and current welfare recipients in Michigan, this study examines how the extent of work participation and welfare receipt over the period 1997–2003 is associated with child behavior. We use a fixed-effects regression design to control for all time-invariant characteristics of mothers and children. We find few associations between work and welfare participation and child behavior. In contrast, measures of household economic circumstances, such as financial strain and hassles, and mothers'' psychological problems and stress were consistently associated with reports of child behavior. Overall, these results suggest that among welfare leavers followed over the longer term, work participation and welfare receipt, per se, are relatively less important correlates of children''s behavior compared to the more proximate family economic and psychological stressors that persist despite leavers'' substantially increased work and decreased welfare use over time. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article outlines a framework for developmentally oriented policy research. Drawing from U. Bronfenbrenner's (1995) dynamic developmental systems theory, the authors suggest ways in which the key tenets of process, persons, context, and time can inform policy research in developmental psychology and can be used to support a causal interpretation of the results of those analyses. Conceptualizing public policies from a dynamic developmental systems perspective has a variety of implications for future research, and this article considers some of these implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of welfare reform, thousands of low-income single mothers have transitioned into the labor market. In this article, the authors examine how the work conditions of mothers leaving welfare for employment are associated with the emotional well-being of 372 children ages 5 to 15 years. The authors examine the cumulative incidence, over a 5-year period, of maternal non-family-friendly work conditions, including long work hours, erratic work schedules, nonday shifts, and lengthy commute times, in association with children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and levels of positive behavior. The authors found that mothers' lengthy commute times are associated with higher levels of internalizing problem behaviors and lower levels of positive behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The links between single mothers' employment patterns and change over time in the well-being of the mothers' adolescent children were investigated using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Adolescents were ages 14 to 16 at baseline, and they and their mothers were followed for 2 years. Relative to being continuously employed in a good job, findings suggest that adolescents whose mothers lose a job without regaining employment show declines in mastery and self-esteem, those whose mothers are continuously employed in a bad job show an increased likelihood of grade repetition, and those whose mothers are either persistently unemployed or lose more than one job show an increased likelihood of school dropout. These effects are not explained by concomitant changes in family income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from a representative sample (N = 443) of mothers with pre-school and school-age children who were randomly selected from the welfare caseload in one urban county in Michigan in early 1997. We investigate how mothers' experiences of severe physical abuse relate to maternal reports of children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Mothers experiencing domestic violence did not differ from other mothers on punitive discipline or emotional warmth towards their children, but they did experience more parenting stress and had higher rates of mental health and substance abuse disorders. Controlling for an array of demographic characteristics, results suggest that children of abused mothers display significantly higher levels of externalizing, but not internalizing, behavior problems. The association of domestic violence and externalizing behaviors is only partially mediated by maternal psychological characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relatively little is known about families who have been sanctioned since the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. We use panel data from the Women's Employment Survey to examine the predictors of sanctioning and consequences for material hardship among a sample of welfare recipients under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Approximately 12 percent reported being sanctioned by fall 1998. Statistically significant predictors include being African American and lacking a high school education. Controlling for a wide range of personal and demographic characteristics, we find that sanctions predict utility shutoffs, engaging in hardship-mediating activities, and subjective perceptions of economic hardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the role of prechildbearing characteristics in later-life depressive symptomatology among 990 married and unmarried teenage childbearers. Data from teenagers in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) were used to test the relative contribution of age and marital status at first birth to depressive symptomatology measured during young adulthood (ages 27-29). Unmarried teenage childbearers displayed higher levels of depressive symptoms in young adulthood than did women who first give birth as married adults. However, the psychological health of married teenage mothers in later life was as good as that of married adult mothers, whereas unmarried adult mothers and unmarried teenage mothers had similarly poor outcomes. The findings of this study suggest that marital status, rather than age at first birth, may be more relevant for later-life psychological health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study that investigated how perceptions of the school psychological environment predict change overtime in educational expectations among a number of low-income adolescent mothers. Importance of interpersonal relationships in the learning environment; Analysis of the psychological mismatch between the school environment and the emotional needs of children; Discussion on the results of regression analyses.

We examine the associations among multigenerational coresidence, intrafamilial conflict over childrearing, and parenting stress in 190 young adolescent mothers at 6, 12, and 24 months postpartum. Analyses assessed the association between coresidence and conflict on parenting stress in 2 ways. To investigate associations between coresidence and conflict at specific points postpartum, 3 cross-sectional analyses were conducted. To assess the association between postpartum duration of coresidence and conflict, we predicted parenting stress at 24 months from the duration of coresidence and conflict across the 3 time points. While the coefficients in the cross-sectional models for coresidence and conflict increased from 6 to 24 months, the change was not significant over time holding all other variables constant. The interaction of coresidence by conflict was not associated with parenting stress at any time point. Additionally, duration of coresidence was not associated with parenting stress at 24 months. However, in contrast, sustained conflict over time was associated with higher levels of parenting stress at 24 months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS), we found that teenagers who live in nonmarried families are less likely to graduate from high school or to attend college, more likely to smoke or drink, and more likely to initiate sexual activity. Not all nonmarried families are alike, however. In particular, teenagers living with their single mothers and with at least one grandparent in multigenerational households have developmental outcomes that are at least as good and often better than the outcomes of teenagers in married families. These findings obtain when a wide array of economic resources, parenting behavior, and home and school characteristics are controlled for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the effects of psychological characteristics and attitudes on the employment of welfare recipients in Michigan. Factors necessary in obtaining and maintaining employment of welfare recipients; Barriers of employment for welfare recipients; Logistic regression analysis on psychological characteristics and attitudes of welfare recipients.

Examines the associations among stressful life events, social support systems and depressive symptoms in first-time welfare recipients. Criterion and predictor variables; Prevalence of depressive symptoms and hypothesized correlates; Coefficients of hierarchical regression analysis.

This study investigated correlates of depressive symptoms among 56 (30 Black and 26 White) low-income, coresiding teenage mothers and their mothers (referred to as grandmothers). Racial differences in teenage mothers' and grandmothers' reports of decision making and depressive symptoms and in the association of decision making with depressive symptoms were explored. Racial differences in levels of depressive symptoms emerged for grandmothers but not for teens. There were no significant differences in levels of decision making; however, the relation of decision making to depressive symptoms differed by racial group. Among White families, greater teen participation in decision making was negatively associated with teenage mothers' depressive symptoms. Among Black families, the opposite was found. A similar pattern of effects was observed for grandmothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this longitudinal investigation, the authors drew on cumulative risk theories to provide new evidence about the effects of sociodemographic risk factors for adolescent nonmarital childbearing among 958 girls in a nationally representative sample. The effect of a cumulative risk index was highly significant--adolescent girls who experienced five or more sociodemographic risk factors were 16 times more likely than their counterparts with only one risk factor to experience a nonmarital childbirth during the teenage years. The authors also examined the role of hypothesized protective factors--including high self-esteem, high basic skills, and high educational expectations--in interaction with the cumulative risk index. Findings suggest that under similar levels of sociodemographic risk, adolescent girls with high educational expectations are less likely to experience a nonmarital birth. However, the buffering effects of high educational expectations account for comparatively less than cumulative risk effects on nonmarital childbearing during adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent changes in welfare programs, including expanded and strictly enforced work and community service requirements, have raised interest in the factors that lead to welfare receipt and that might affect recipients' success in leaving welfare. Most earlier studies focused on welfare recipients' labor market experiences and human capital characteristics, but recent research has begun to examine psychosocial characteristics, such as self-esteem and self-efficacy. The study described in this article investigated whether family background characteristics and self-esteem and self-efficacy measured early in life related to welfare use in young adulthood. Female welfare recipients scored lower on measures of self-esteem and self-efficacy before they entered the welfare system compared with other women. Multivariate analyses showed a robust and substantive association between self-esteem and welfare use but not between self-efficacy and welfare receipt. The finding that low self-esteem is associated with welfare receipt suggests that welfare recipients may find it much harder to comply with the expanded and stricter work or community service mandates than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a study which investigated parenting behaviors, parent-adolescent relationships and adolescent attitudes and behaviors in three family types. Methodology; Comparison of independent and dependent variables across family types; Hierarchical multiple regressions predicting family processes and adolescent adjustment.

It is informed that the goal of the Journal of Social Issues (JSI) is to evaluate the effects of welfare reform and how it has affected the number of people on welfare and the well-being of current and former recipients and their children. Recent studies show that since welfare reform, women who have left welfare for work, or who combine welfare and work, are better off economically than those who remain on the welfare caseloads and do not work. Several of the articles in JSI documents that, given current policies and labor market trends, one needs to provide the necessary supports to "make work pay" with other policy mechanisms such as child care, health insurance, and the Earned Income Tax Credit in order to help single mothers to leave welfare and improve their economic security. It is concluded that the best way by which social scientists can improve the lives of low-income women is by going about their job with honesty and scientific integrity, i.e., to help determine what policies best help low-income women succeed.

Creating opportunities for people to achieve socioeconomic mobility is a widely shared societal goal. Paradoxically, however, achieving this goal can pose a threat to high-socioeconomic-status (SES) people as they look to maintain their privileged positions in society for both them and their children. Two studies evaluate whether this threat manifests as "opportunity hoarding" in which high-SES parents adopt attitudes and behaviors aimed at shoring up their families' access to valuable educational and economic resources. The current paper provides converging evidence for this hypothesis across two studies conducted with 2,557 American parents. An initial correlational study demonstrated that believing that socioeconomic mobility is possible was associated with high-SES parents being more inclined to attempt to secure valuable educational and economic resources for their children, even when doing so came at the cost of low-SES families. Specifically, high-SES parents with stronger beliefs in socioeconomic mobility exhibited decreased support for redistributive policies and viewed engaging in discrete behaviors that would unfairly advantage their children (e.g., allowing them to misrepresent their identities on school and job applications) as more acceptable relative to both low-SES parents with similar beliefs and high-SES parents who were less optimistic about socioeconomic mobility. A subsequent experimental study established these relationships causally by comparing parents' responses to different types of socioeconomic mobility. Together, the current findings merge insights across psychology and economics to deepen understandings of the processes through which societal inequities emerge and persist, especially during times of apparently abundant opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates effects of welfare reform in the United States on the next generation. Most previous studies of effects of welfare reform on adolescents focused on high‐school dropout of girls or fertility; little is known about how welfare reform has affected other teenage behaviors or boys. We use a difference‐in‐difference‐in‐differences framework to identify gender‐specific effects of welfare reform on skipping school, fighting, damaging property, stealing, hurting others, smoking, alcohol, marijuana, and other illicit drugs. Welfare reform led to increases in delinquent behaviors of boys as well as increases in substance use of boys and girls, with substantially larger effects for boys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Income inequality and the achievement test score gap between high- and low-income children increased dramatically in the United States beginning in the 1970s. This article investigates the demographic (family income, mother's education, family size, two-parent family structure, and age of mother at birth) underpinnings of the growing income-based gap in schooling using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Across 31 cohorts, we find that increases in the income gap between high- and low-income children account for approximately three-quarters of the increasing gap in completed schooling, one-half of the gap in college attendance, and one-fifth of the gap in college graduation. We find no consistent evidence of increases in the estimated associations between parental income and children's completed schooling. Increasing gaps in the two-parent family structures of high- and low-income families accounted for relatively little of the schooling gap because our estimates of the (regression-adjusted) associations between family structure and schooling were surprisingly small for much of our accounting period. On the other hand, increasing gaps in mother's age at the time of birth accounts for a substantial portion of the increasing schooling gap: mother's age is consistently predictive of children's completed schooling, and the maternal age gap for children born into low- and high-income families increased considerably over the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The prevalence of corporal punishment is high in the United States despite a 1998 American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement urging against its use. The current study tests whether the socioeconomic difference in its use by parents has changed over the past quarter century. It goes on to test whether socioeconomic differences in the use of nonphysical discipline have also changed over time. METHODS: Data are drawn from 4 national studies conducted between 1988 and 2011. Each asked how often a kindergarten-aged child was spanked in the past week and what the parents would do if the child misbehaved, with physical discipline, time-out, and talking to child as possible responses. We use regression models to estimate parents' responses to these questions at the 90th, 50th, and 10th percentiles of the income and education distributions and t tests to compare estimates across cohorts. RESULTS: The proportion of mothers at the 50th income-percentile who endorse physical discipline decreased from 46% to 21% over time. Gaps between the 90th and 10th income-percentiles were stable at 11 and 18 percentage points in 1988 and 2011. The percentage of mothers at the 10th income-percentile endorsing time-outs increased from 51% to 71%, and the 90/10 income gap decreased from 23 to 14 percentage points between 1998 and 2011. CONCLUSIONS: Decline in popular support for physical discipline reflects real changes in parents' discipline strategies. These changes have occurred at all socioeconomic levels, producing for some behaviors a significant reduction in socioeconomic differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors use a lifecourse framework to examine how the ‘‘new risk economy’’ has left middle-age professionals, managers, and executives more vulnerable to job loss and unemployment despite high levels of human capital. Using in-depth qualitative data from 77 recently-unemployed white-collar workers, the authors examine perceptions of macro-economic forces and their implications for respondents’ career-recovery plans and expectations for their own and their children’s future career pathways. The authors find that most respondents attributed their job loss to factors associated with globalization and used coping strategies that involved adapting a ‘‘free-agent’’ mentality in the face of declining employer loyalty and deprofessionalization to manage perceptions of age bias. Respondents also make mastering the ‘‘new risk economy’’ a developmental goal for themselves and their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a large random sample of welfare recipients in the post-welfare reform era, this article examines the prevalence of mental health disorders, substance dependence, and physical health or disability, their co-occurrence with human capital problems, and their relation to employment. Half of the participants have none of these potential barriers to employment. Mental health and human capital problems, when present, tend to occur in isolation about half the time. Women with co-occurring human-capital, mental-health, and physical-health problems have the poorest work outcomes. The findings suggest the need to design and implement more assessment, referrals, and service provision to support women in meeting the challenges in the transition from welfare to work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes the 1996 welfare reform act and introduces a set of key questions that remain unanswered as initial results concerning the effects of welfare reform are being analyzed and discussed by policymakers andresearchers. We introduce the collection of articles presented in this issue of the Journal of Social Issues, which are devoted to the topic of welfare reform and its potential ramifications for the well-being of families. The articles are grouped into three broad areas that represent major topics of interest to researchers, policy analysts, and others concerned with how welfare reform affects the lives of women and families: the politics of welfare reform, barriers to employment, and the impact of welfare reform on family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine socioeconomic and psychological well-being among 88 low-income minor mothers. Half of the young mothers receive cash welfare assistance and face new policy mandates regarding coresidence status and school attendance. Although most appear to be "complying" with the requirements of the new welfare rules and are satisfied with their current living arrangements, many are faring poorly on dimensions of psychological well-being and life stress. Receipt of cash welfare is not a significant correlate of school success, parenting stress, or economic strain. Teen coresidence with their mothers does not appear to buffer against the experience of child care problems, depressive symptoms, or domestic violence. We discuss the implications of the results forresearch, policy, and services for teen parent families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]