Caring
Parental supervision and adolescent risky behaviors
Sarah Grace See
Review of Economics of the Household, March 2016, Pages 185-206
Abstract:
This paper re-examines the relationship between parental supervision and adolescents' engagement in risky behaviors. Using the Child Development Supplement and Transition to Adulthood of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I consider different measures of supervision among a sample of adolescents 10-21 years old. Issues relating to endogeneity bias and unobserved heterogeneity are accounted for using lagged amounts of supervision and fixed effects as an estimation strategy. The results highlight the role of fathers in mitigating cigarette smoking in the past month, regular alcohol consumption in the past year, and marijuana smoking in the past month. The research emphasizes the need to account for unobserved heterogeneity and supports the idea of looking at the different roles of each parent in affecting child outcomes.
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Parental Influences on Health and Longevity: Lessons from a Large Sample of Adoptees
Mikael Lindahl et al.
NBER Working Paper, January 2016
Abstract:
To what extent is the length of our lives determined by pre-birth factors? And to what extent is it affected by parental resources during our upbringing that can be influenced by public policy? We study the formation of adult health and mortality using data on about 21,000 adoptees born between 1940 and 1967. The data include detailed information on both biological and adopting parents. We find that the health of the biological parents affects the health of their adopted children. Thus, we confirm that genes and conditions in utero are important intergenerational transmission channels for long-term health. However, we also find strong evidence that the educational attainment of the adopting mother has a significant impact on the health of her adoptive children, suggesting that family environment and resources in the post-birth years have long-term consequences for children's health.
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Paid family leave's effect on hospital admissions for pediatric abusive head trauma
Joanne Klevens et al.
Injury Prevention, forthcoming
Abstract:
Paediatric abusive head trauma (AHT) is a leading cause of fatal child maltreatment among young children. Current prevention efforts have not been consistently effective. Policies such as paid parental leave could potentially prevent AHT, given its impacts on risk factors for child maltreatment. To explore associations between California's 2004 paid family leave (PFL) policy and hospital admissions for AHT, we used difference-in-difference analyses of 1995-2011 US state-level data before and after the policy in California and seven comparison states. Compared with seven states with no PFL policies, California's 2004 PFL showed a significant decrease in AHT admissions in both <1 and <2-year-olds. Analyses using additional data years and comparators could yield different results.
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Bonnie Le & Emily Impett
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, March 2016, Pages 323-336
Abstract:
How do parents feel when they regulate their emotional expressions in ways that are incongruent with their genuine feelings? In an experimental study, parents reported experiencing lower authenticity, emotional well-being, relationship quality, and responsiveness to their children's needs when they recalled caregiving experiences in which they suppressed negative emotions and amplified positive emotions, relative to a control condition. In a 10-day daily experience study, parents tended to use both regulation strategies simultaneously. In addition, assessing their unique effects indicated that positive emotion amplification, but not negative emotion suppression, had an indirect effect on parental outcomes via authenticity, with negative emotion suppression no longer being costly. This indirect effect was dampened when accounting for care difficulty. In both studies, effects were independent of a child's mood. The current results suggest that parents' attempts to suppress negative and amplify positive emotions during child care can detract from their well-being and high-quality parent-child bonds.
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Match quality and maternal investments in children
Erin Fletcher
Review of Economics of the Household, March 2016, Pages 83-102
Abstract:
Marriage advocates contend that the unstable environment caused by divorce can have adverse effects on children's educational and behavioral outcomes. However, the assignment of poor outcomes to the divorce itself fails to take into account relationship quality and heterogeneity in place before or in the absence of union dissolution. I explore the link between heterogeneity of relationship quality and investments in children by showing that women who report less satisfaction in their relationships spend less time reading with their children. I test various theoretical mechanisms by which we would expect women to decrease their investments in a child using information about the match including reported argument frequency and whether the union dissolves. The results suggest that subjective measures tell a more complete story about investments in children than indicated by future union status, argument frequency or parental quality.
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Birth order and child cognitive outcomes: An exploration of the parental time mechanism
Chiara Monfardini & Sarah Grace See
Education Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Higher birth order positions are associated with poorer outcomes due to smaller shares of resources received within the household. Using a sample of Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement children, we investigate if the negative birth order effect we find in cognitive outcomes is due to unequal allocation of mother and father time investments. Exploiting the presence of siblings in the sample, we show that birth order differences in parental time are mostly driven by between-families variation rather than within-family variation. This finding suggests that birth order effects are unlikely to be driven by differences in quality time spent with either parent.
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Viviane Kovess-Masfety et al.
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, forthcoming
Methods: Data were drawn from the School Children Mental Health Europe project conducted in six European Union countries (youth ages 6-11, n = 3195). Child mental health was assessed by parents and teachers using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and by children themselves with the Dominic Interactive. Child video game usage was reported by the parents. Teachers evaluated academic functioning. Multivariable logistic regressions were used.
Results: 20 % of the children played video games more than 5 h per week. Factors associated with time spent playing video games included being a boy, being older, and belonging to a medium size family. Having a less educated, single, inactive, or psychologically distressed mother decreased time spent playing video games. Children living in Western European countries were significantly less likely to have high video game usage (9.66 vs 20.49 %) though this was not homogenous. Once adjusted for child age and gender, number of children, mothers age, marital status, education, employment status, psychological distress, and region, high usage was associated with 1.75 times the odds of high intellectual functioning (95 % CI 1.31-2.33), and 1.88 times the odds of high overall school competence (95 % CI 1.44-2.47). Once controlled for high usage predictors, there were no significant associations with any child self-reported or mother- or teacher-reported mental health problems. High usage was associated with decreases in peer relationship problems [OR 0.41 (0.2-0.86) and in prosocial deficits (0.23 (0.07, 0.81)].
Conclusions: Playing video games may have positive effects on young children. Understanding the mechanisms through which video game use may stimulate children should be further investigated.
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Secure Infant-Mother Attachment Buffers the Effect of Early-Life Stress on Age of Menarche
Sooyeon Sung et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research indicates that being reared in stressful environments is associated with earlier onset of menarche in girls. In this research, we examined (a) whether these effects are driven by exposure to certain dimensions of stress (harshness or unpredictability) during the first 5 years of life and (b) whether the negative effects of stress on the timing of menarche are buffered by secure infant-mother attachment. Results revealed that (a) exposure to greater harshness (but not unpredictability) during the first 5 years of life predicted earlier menarche and (b) secure infant-mother attachment buffered girls from this effect of harsh environments. By connecting attachment research to its evolutionary foundations, these results illuminate how environmental stressors and relationships early in life jointly affect pubertal timing.
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Mothers' Involuntary Job Loss and Children's Academic Achievement
Elif Filiz
Journal of Labor Research, March 2016, Pages 98-127
Abstract:
Using matched mother-child data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I examine the impact of mothers' involuntary job loss on children's academic achievement. Single mothers' job displacement affects children's math and reading test scores negatively and statistically significantly in the short run. Displacement of married mothers has no impact on their children's test scores. The decline in income and a worsening of child's behavioral problems are two channels through which single mothers' job loss impacts test scores.
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Single Mothers by Choice: Mother-Child Relationships and Children's Psychological Adjustment
Susan Golombok et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Fifty-one solo mother families were compared with 52 two-parent families all with a 4-9-year-old child conceived by donor insemination. Standardized interview, observational and questionnaire measures of maternal wellbeing, mother-child relationships and child adjustment were administered to mothers, children and teachers. There were no differences in parenting quality between family types apart from lower mother-child conflict in solo mother families. Neither were there differences in child adjustment. Perceived financial difficulties, child's gender, and parenting stress were associated with children's adjustment problems in both family types. The findings suggest that solo motherhood, in itself, does not result in psychological problems for children.
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Home-Based Early Intervention and the Influence of Family Resources on Cognitive Development
Carla Bann et al.
Pediatrics, forthcoming
Objective: To investigate whether early developmental intervention (EDI) can positively affect the trajectories of cognitive development among children from low-resource families.
Methods: Longitudinal analyses were conducted of data from 293 children in the Brain Research to Ameliorate Impaired Neurodevelopment Home-based Intervention Trial, a randomized controlled trial of a home-based EDI program, to examine trajectories of Bayley Scales of Infant Development-Second Edition Mental Development Index (MDI) scores from 12 to 36 months of age among young children from high- and low-resource families in 3 low- to middle-resource countries.
Results: A 3-way interaction among family resources, intervention group, and age was statistically significant after controlling for maternal, child, and birth characteristics (Wald χ2(1) = 9.41, P = .002). Among children of families with high resources, both the intervention and control groups had significant increases in MDI scores over time (P < .001 and P = .002, respectively), and 36-month MDI scores for these 2 groups did not differ significantly (P = .602). However, in families with low resources, the EDI group displayed greater improvement, resulting in significantly higher 36-month MDI scores than the control group (P < .001). In addition, the 36-month MDI scores for children in families with low resources receiving EDI did not differ significantly from children from high-resource families in either the EDI (P = .509) or control (P = .882) groups.
Conclusions: A home-based EDI during the first 3 years of life can substantially decrease the developmental gap between children from families with lower versus higher resources, even among children in low- to middle-resource countries.
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The Mobility of Elite Life Scientists: Professional and Personal Determinants
Pierre Azoulay, Ina Ganguli & Joshua Graff Zivin
NBER Working Paper, February 2016
Abstract:
As scientists' careers unfold, mobility can allow researchers to find environments where they are more productive and more effectively contribute to the generation of new knowledge. In this paper, we examine the determinants of mobility of elite academics within the life sciences, including individual productivity measures and for the first time, measures of the peer environment and family factors. Using a unique data set compiled from the career histories of 10,004 elite life scientists in the U.S., we paint a nuanced picture of mobility. Prolific scientists are more likely to move, but this impulse is constrained by recent NIH funding. The quality of peer environments both near and far is an additional factor that influences mobility decisions. Interestingly, we also identify a significant role for family structure. Scientists appear to be unwilling to move when their children are between the ages of 14-17, which is when US children are typically enrolled in middle school or high school. This suggests that even elite scientists find it costly to disrupt the social networks of their children and take these costs into account when making career decisions.
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The Impact of Maternal Depression on Child Academic and Socioemotional Outcomes
Heather Dahlen
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines how maternal depression affects children's test scores and socioemotional outcomes. An empirical challenge surrounding this research is to address the omission of unobserved factors affecting both maternal depression and child outcomes. By implementing bounding, an underutilized estimation technique not previously applied to maternal depression studies, I am able to generate ranges of the causal impact of maternal depression on child test scores and socioemotional outcomes. Primary findings include moderately-sized reductions in children's socioemotional measures and slight reductions in children's test scores when a mother reported any level of depression in single-period analyses, an increase in magnitude of the findings for kindergarten students as severity of depression increased, and larger impacts on reading scores of third graders when their mother was depressed in multiple time periods.