Family Separation
Exploring Education Differences in the Parental Well-Being Gap
Jennifer March Augustine & Daniela Negraia
Sociological Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Increasing evidence suggests that raising minor children is a “mixed bag” of emotions. Parents with minor children report more positive emotions, but also more negative emotions than adults without children. Little attention, however, has been paid to how this mixed bag varies by one's education level: a key socioeconomic indicator connected to family life and well-being. Drawing on data from the American Time Use Survey Subjective Well-being Module (2010, 2012, 2013; N = 17,481 respondents) and random effects models, we explored this question. Results revealed that parents of all education levels (vs. non-parents) reported greater levels of positive emotions (happiness, meaning) and less sadness, but only higher educated parents reported greater levels of negative emotions (stress, fatigue). Among lower educated women, however, we observed no parental well-being gap. These findings provide new knowledge of, and challenge several prevailing arguments about, how parenting is associated with the well-being of higher and lower socioeconomic groups.
Time for digital media but no time for school? An investigation of displacement effects among adolescents of gen X, Y, and Z
Anne Reinhardt, Claudia Wilhelm & Sophie Mayen
Psychology of Popular Media, forthcoming
Abstract:
Since the beginning of the digital age, there have been critical voices claiming that spending time with digital media might reduce time dedicated to school-related obligations, leading to detrimental effects on academic performance. However, findings on this topic are mixed and lack large-scale time-use data that allow the investigation of displacement effects from a long-term perspective. To address this research gap, we tested a Time-allocation Model of Media Use among 12- to 18-year-old students from three different media generations (Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z). The analysis relies on high-quality daily diary data (i.e., all existing data sets of the German Time-Use Survey) collected between 1991 and 2013 (N1991/1992 = 1,310, N2001/2002 = 1,329, N2012/2013 = 1,274). The findings of the partial least squares structural equation modeling multigroup analysis demonstrate that free time availability is an important predictor of media choice. Moreover, although digital media use considerably increased over time, the effects on school-related obligation time remained largely stable and, most importantly, small. The study offers new insights into changes in media use and their effects on school-related obligation time across different generations from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. It is adaptable for future research, analyzing prospective media generations.
Sibling Spillovers: Having an Academically Successful Older Sibling May Be More Important for Children in Disadvantaged Families
Emma Zang, Poh Lin Tan & Philip Cook
American Journal of Sociology, March 2023, Pages 1529–1571
Abstract:
This article examines causal sibling spillover effects among students from different family backgrounds in elementary and middle school. Family backgrounds are captured by race, household structure, mothers’ educational attainment, and school poverty. Exploiting discontinuities in school starting age created by North Carolina school-entry laws, we adopt a quasi-experimental approach and compare test scores of public school students whose older siblings were born shortly before and after the school-entry cutoff date. We find that individuals whose older siblings were born shortly after the school-entry cutoff date have significantly higher test scores in middle school and that this positive spillover effect is particularly strong in disadvantaged families. We estimate that the spillover effect accounts for approximately one-third of observed statistical associations in test scores between siblings, and the magnitude is much larger for disadvantaged families. Our results suggest that spillover effects from older to younger siblings may lead to greater divergence in academic outcomes and economic inequality between families.
Birth order, socioeconomic background and educational attainment
Andra Hiriscau & Mihaela Pintea
Education Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of birth order on educational attainment in the United States and the underlying mechanism producing these effects. Using a family fixed effects model, we find negative birth order effects on educational outcomes. However, this effect varies depending on the household's income, being the strongest for households with the highest income and diminishing as households' income decreases. In addition, we show that the timing of income across childhood is important for completed education, as the largest gap in educational attainment between siblings emerges between those who were born and spent their early childhood in wealthier households.
Effects of Parental Disability on Children's Schooling: The Surprising Role of Parental Education
Katie Bollman & Leah Lakdawala
AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023, Pages 477-481
Abstract:
We show that negative effects of parental disability on schooling investments are larger for economically advantaged families. Among children with a veteran father, private school attendance declines with the severity of a father's service-related disability by more when fathers have completed college relative to when fathers have not. Paternal disability also lowers the mobility of young adults, suggesting that reduced educational investment persists into young adulthood. Lost earnings are one mechanism; disability decreases labor supply for all, but foregone earnings are larger for highly educated fathers. Losses are offset by Veterans Affairs transfers for less educated fathers but not for educated fathers.
Becoming a Father, Staying a Father: An Examination of the Cumulative Wage Premium for U.S. Residential Fathers
Ohjae Gowen
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
The instability of fathers’ co-residence with children has become an increasingly prevalent experience for U.S. families. Despite long-standing scholarship examining the relationship between fatherhood and wage advantages, few studies have investigated how variation in fathers’ stable co-residence with a child may produce temporal changes in the wage premium over the life course. Building on prior explanations of the fatherhood wage premium, I test if the wage premium grows with time since the birth of a resident child and if the premium depends on fathers’ co-residence with a child. I use marginal structural models with repeated outcome measures and data from 4060 men in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to assess the cumulative influence of co-residential biological fatherhood on wages. I find that each year of residential fatherhood is associated with a wage gain of 1.2 percent, while the immediate wage benefit to residential fatherhood is minor. Thus, the fatherhood premium is better understood as an unfolding process of cumulative advantage rather than a one-time bonus. Furthermore, the wage premium ceases to accumulate once fathers lose co-residential status with a child, which highlights the contingency of the premium on stable co-residence. Together, these findings shed light on one pathway through which family (in)stability -- a phenomenon fundamentally embedded in individual life experiences -- stratifies men’s wages across the life course.
Novel measures of family orientation and childhood self-regulation: A genetically informed twin study
Gianna Rea-Sandin et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is a dearth of research examining the relation between culture and childhood self-regulation in family psychology. Family orientation refers to the emphasis on providing support, respect, and obligation to the family system, and it is important for children’s functioning, yet existing literature on related constructs often relies on parent-reported measures. Additionally, twin research has neglected the role of culture in the genetic and environmental contributions to children’s self-regulation. Using observational and self-reported data from children, parents, and teachers, this study (a) proposed novel coding schemes and factor analytic approaches to capture family orientation, (b) examined associations between family orientation and self-regulation, and (c) tested whether family orientation moderated the heritability of self-regulation in middle childhood. Twin children (N = 710; Mage = 8.38 years, SD = 0.66; 49.1% female; 28.3% Hispanic/Latino/x, 58.5% White) were drawn from the Arizona Twin Project, which recruited children from birth records at 12 months of age. Family orientation values were indexed by parent-reported familism, and family orientation behaviors comprised coded measures of children’s family orientation and experimenter ratings of caregiver and child behavior. Self-regulation was assessed using multiple task-based assessments of executive function and parent- and teacher-reported effortful control. Net of covariates, higher family orientation behaviors positively predicted nearly all measures of children’s self-regulation, and associations were consistent across sex, family socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity. There was no evidence that family orientation values nor behaviors moderated the heritability of children’s self-regulation. This study highlights the complex nature of cultural variation within the family and its importance for children’s self-regulatory abilities.