Fostering Parents
Youth's political identity and fertility desires
Heather Rackin & Christina Gibson-Davis
Journal of Marriage and Family, forthcoming
Method: Data come from the 1989–2019 waves of Monitoring the Future, a nationally representative study of 12th graders (N = 67,557). Regression models examined how political identity (measured by Republican or Democrat preference) predicts the desired number of children, measured both continuously and categorically.
Results: Regardless of the period, Republicans desired more children than Democrats -- a difference that grew over time, from 0.07 in 1989–1993 to 0.29 in 2014–2019. Differences in religiosity and attitudes toward gender and childbearing explained pre-2004 partisan gaps. From 2004 and onward, these factors attenuated, but did not fully explain, Republican–Democrat gaps. In later periods, relative to Democrats, Republicans still wanted more children on average, had a higher probability of wanting four or more children in 2004–2013 and a lower probability of eschewing parenthood in 2014–2019.
Childcare Regulation and the Fertility Gap
Anna Claire Flowers et al.
George Mason University Working Paper, May 2024
Abstract:
Children require care. The market for childcare has received much attention in recent years as many countries consider subsidizing or supplying childcare as a response to dropping birth rates. However, the relationship between childcare markets and the fertility gap -- the difference between desired and achieved fertility -- is yet to be explored. We build upon previous work by investigating the regulation of childcare and fertility gaps across the U.S. states. Our results consistently show fewer childcare regulations are associated with smaller fertility gaps. This suggests that women are better able to achieve their fertility goals in policy environments that allow for more flexibility in childcare options and lower costs.
Shuffle Out, Shuffle In: Child Protective Services Contact and Institutional Shuffling among Middle-Class Black Mothers
DeAnna Smith
Social Problems, forthcoming
Abstract:
Researchers have shown how punitive state contact shapes the lives of poor Black individuals but have paid less attention to the role of punitive state contact in the lives of the Black middle-class. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 29 middle-class Black mothers recently investigated by Child Protective Services (CPS) -- a punitive state institution with the ability to remove children from their homes -- this article asks how Black mothers who are not poor assess risk of future CPS contact and navigate the threats it poses. Armed with greater resources than poor mothers, middle-class Black mothers work to evade future CPS contact through institutional shuffling -- a resource-intensive evasion strategy that involves shuffling children out of certain types of institutions and into others. I find that middle-class Black mothers shuffle their children out of formal institutions and into informal ones, out of predominantly white institutions and into predominantly Black ones, and out of institutions where they have weak ties and into institutions where they have strong ties. While shuffling may shield mothers and children from future CPS contact, it may also shrink mothers’ networks, isolate children from a broad array of institutional resources, and inadvertently expose middle-class Black families to greater surveillance and punishment.
Youth Caregivers of Adults in the United States: Prevalence and the Association Between Caregiving and Education
Katherine Miller et al.
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
A growing proportion of individuals adopt family caregiving roles. Family caregivers are the primary providers of long-term care in the United States yet limited federal policy supports exist, despite the known negative impacts of caregiving. There is also limited information about the prevalence of youth/young adult caregivers and the impacts of caregiving at formative ages in the United States. Our objective is to estimate the prevalence of youth caregivers and examine the association of caregiving with educational investments. We use the American Time Use Survey (2013–2019) to identify and describe youth caregivers (aged 15–18) and young adult caregivers (aged 19–22) and compare them with non-caregiving peers. We estimate that there are approximately 1,623,000 youth caregivers and 1,986,000 young adult caregivers, corresponding to 9.2% and 12.7% of these age groups, respectively. However, there is a wide range in the estimated prevalence per year, from approximately 364,000 to 2.8 million youth caregivers and from 353,000 to 2.2 million young adult caregivers, depending on caregiver definition. Unlike adult caregivers, we find that young men and women were nearly equally likely to provide care. We also find that non-White individuals are disproportionately represented as youth caregivers. Compared with non-caregiving peers, both youth and young adult caregivers are less likely to be enrolled in school and, among those enrolled in school, spend significantly less time on educational activities. Considering the association of caregiving among youth/young adults and education, policies supporting youth and young adult caregivers are critical.
How did the European Marriage Pattern persist? Social versus familial inheritance: England and Quebec, 1650–1850
Gregory Clark, Neil Cummins & Matthew Curtis
Economics & Human Biology, August 2024
Abstract:
The European Marriage Pattern (EMP), in place in NW Europe for perhaps 500 years, substantially limited fertility. But how could such limitation persist when some individuals who deviated from the EMP norm had more children? If their children inherited their deviant behaviors, their descendants would quickly become the majority of later generations. This puzzle has two possible solutions. The first is that all those that deviated actually had lower net fertility over multiple generations. We show, however, no fertility penalty to future generations from higher initial fertility. Instead the EMP survived because even though the EMP persisted at the social level, children did not inherit their parents’ individual fertility choices. In the paper we show evidence consistent with lateral, as opposed to vertical, transmission of EMP fertility behaviors.
Maternal depression as catalyst for cooperation: Evidence from Uganda
Alessandra Cassar, Patricia Schneider & Chukwuemeka Ugwu
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study investigates the hypothesis that perinatal depression could function as a catalyst for a mother to elicit cooperation from others in times of need (Hagen, 2002). We analyze data on social support and depression from 292 women in Uganda around the time of giving birth and find that a perceived lack of support, especially from the baby's father, is linked to a higher risk of depression in the mother. Moreover, we employ a quasi-experimental strategy to analyze the lesser-studied direction of the causality and estimate the effect of perinatal depression on different types of support (instrumental, informational, emotional, economic) a mother receives from kin, affines, and unrelated individuals. The results indicate that mothers at the threshold of depression obtain increased help from several individuals, especially the baby's father. Others who show a positive reaction include the woman's mother (maternal grandmother), father (maternal grandfather), and, to a minor extent, father-in-law (paternal grandfather), and cousins. Unrelated but physically close individuals (neighbors and friends) generally provide substantial help but do not react at the depression threshold. Overall, our findings provide some evidence in favor of the bargaining hypothesis for maternal depression.
DNA methylation as a possible causal mechanism linking childhood adversity and health: Results from two-sample mendelian randomization study
Isabel Schuurmans, Erin Dunn & Alexandre Lussier
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Childhood adversity is an important risk factor for adverse health across the life course. Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation (DNAm), are one hypothesized mechanism linking adversity to disease susceptibility. Yet, few studies have determined whether adversity-related DNAm alterations are causally related to future health outcomes or if their developmental timing plays a role in these relationships. Here, we used two-sample Mendelian Randomization to obtain stronger causal inferences about the association between adversity-associated DNAm loci across development (i.e., birth; childhood; adolescence; young adulthood) and 24 mental, physical, and behavioral health outcomes. We identified particularly strong associations between adversity-associated DNAm and ADHD, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, suicide attempts, asthma, coronary artery disease, and chronic kidney disease. A greater number of associations were identified for birth and childhood DNAm, while adolescent and young adulthood DNAm were more closely linked to mental health. Childhood DNAm loci also showed primarily risk suppressing relationships with health outcomes, suggesting that DNAm might reflect compensatory or buffering mechanisms against childhood adversity, rather than acting solely as an indicator of disease risk. Together, our results suggest adversity-related DNAm alterations are linked to both physical and mental health outcomes, with particularly strong impacts of DNAm differences emerging earlier in development.