For the Child
What’s in a distraction? The effect of parental cell phone use on parents’ and children’s question-asking
Caroline Gaudreau, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek & Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although questions fuel children’s learning, adult cell phone use may preoccupy parents, affecting the frequency of questions parents and children ask and answer. We ask whether parental cell phone use will lead to a decrease in the number of questions children and parents ask one another while playing with a novel toy. Fifty-seven parent–child dyads (Mage = 48.72 months, SD = 6.53, 28 girls; 84.2% White) were randomly assigned to a cell phone, paper, or control condition. As children played with a novel toy with hidden functions, parents in the cell phone condition completed a survey about reading on their cell phone, while parents in the paper condition did it on paper. Parents in the control condition did not complete the survey. Results suggest that children asked fewer questions in the cell phone than in the control condition. However, no other condition differences emerged. Parents’ information-seeking questioning, however, differed in all three conditions: they asked more in the control than in the cell phone and paper conditions and, critically, asked more in the paper than cell phone condition. Possible explanations and implications for parents’ cell phone use are discussed.
Gendered Diverging Destinies: Changing Family Structures and the Reproduction of Educational Inequalities Among Sons and Daughters in the United States
Diederik Boertien & Fabrizio Bernardi
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
The prevalence of nontraditional family structures has increased over time, particularly among socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Because children's socioeconomic attainments are positively associated with growing up in a two-parent household, changing family structures are considered to have strengthened the reproduction of social inequalities across generations. However, several studies have shown that childhood family structure relates differently to educational outcomes for sons than for daughters. Therefore, we ask whether there are gender differences in the extent to which changing family structures have contributed to the college attainment gap between children from lower and higher socioeconomic backgrounds. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and 1997 cohorts to estimate extended Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition models that take into account cross-cohort changes in the prevalence of family structures and heterogeneity in the effects of childhood family structure on college attainment. We find that the argument that changes in family structures contributed to diverging destinies in college attainment holds for daughters but not for sons. This result is due to the different changes over time in the effects of childhood family structure by gender and socioeconomic background.
In Their Footsteps or Shadow? Gender Differences in Choosing a STEM Major as a Function of Sibling Configuration and Older Sibling’s Gender and Math Ability
Limor Gabay-Egozi, Natalie Nitsche & Lloyd Grieger
Sex Roles, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although the association between siblings’ compositional characteristics and educational performance has been extensively studied, the question of whether the features of a sibling group are related to substantive gendered educational preferences has not been examined. Our analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort (NLSY-79) Mothers and Children Files (N?=?1545; 57% young women; 22% STEM major) showed that siblings’ compositional characteristics matter for STEM major preferences in college, but only for young women. Our findings indicated that women were more likely to prefer a STEM major if they were raised in smaller sibling groups, in male sibling group dominance, and if they had an older sister with high math achievement. These results are in line with the resource dilution approach; they shed light on the effects of being in a normative male-role sibling group climate; and they suggest that gendered outcomes are shaped by the interplay of role modeling and same-gender competitive stimulation. We also found that for young men, their preference for majoring in a STEM field was mostly driven by their own math ability. These findings suggest that socialization experiences that operate on the sibling level play a crucial role in whether girls become interested in and pursue “gender-atypical” educational choices. Our findings also underscore the need to differentiate these theoretical approaches by gender, particularly when applied to gendered outcomes such as STEM career trajectories.
Health Shocks of the Father and Longevity of the Children's Children
Dora Costa
NBER Working Paper, December 2021
Abstract:
Whether and how a paternal health shock cascades across multiple generations to affect descendant health is understudied even though a link between ancestral living conditions and descendant health may constitute an important source of differences in the stock of health capital across families and thus across ethnic, racial and social groups. I study how a paternal health shock affects grandchildren's longevity in a unique setting where the ancestral stressor is the grandfather's ex-POW status in the US Civil War (1861-5) and the children are born after the war. Ancestral stress is associated with longevity after age 45 of male-line grandsons but not of granddaughters or female-line grandchildren. I rule out transmission through socioeconomic channels and direct cultural transmission from grandfather to grandson. An epigenetic explanation is consistent with observed male-line transmission at epigenetically sensitive ancestral ages and mediation by own late gestational conditions. Consistent with epigenetic reprogramming depending on the in-utero environment, the association between the veteran's ex-POW status and that of his male-line descendants declines across generations.
Heterogeneous Effects of Intergenerational Social Mobility: An Improved Method and New Evidence
Liying Luo
American Sociological Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Intergenerational social mobility has immense implications for individuals’ well-being, attitudes, and behaviors. However, previous methods may be unreliable for estimating heterogeneous mobility effects, especially in the presence of moderate- or large-scale intergenerational mobility. I propose an improved method, called the “mobility contrast model” (MCM). Using simulation evidence, I demonstrate that the MCM is more flexible and reliable for estimating and testing heterogeneous mobility effects, and the results are robust to the scale of intergenerational mobility. I revisit the debate about the effect of mobility on fertility and analyze data from the 1962 Occupational Changes in a Generation Study (OCG-1) and more recent data from the 1974 through 2018 General Social Survey (GSS) using previous models and the MCM. The MCM suggests a small association between fertility and occupational mobility in the GSS data but substantial and heterogeneous educational mobility effects on fertility in the OCG-1 and the GSS. Such effects are difficult to pinpoint using previous methods because mobility effects of different magnitudes and opposite directions among mobility groups may cancel each other out. The new method can be extended to investigate the effect of intergenerational mobility across multiple generations and other research areas, including immigrant assimilation and heterogamy.