Next of kin
Family structure and child outcomes: A high definition, wide angle "snapshot"
Karen Smith Conway & Minghua Li
Review of Economics of the Household, September 2012, Pages 345-374
Abstract:
Using data from the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), this research investigates the relationships between a highly defined set of family structures and a broad set of child outcomes at a particular point in time in a child's life. A detailed classification of family structures is constructed that clarifies key differences among various types of diverse families, and facilitates equivalencies testing and pairwise comparisons across nontraditional family structures. The NSAF contains a large number of observations for less common, but growing, family structures such as single-father families, grandparent-headed households and cohabiters, which makes such detailed analyses feasible and allows further stratification by child age, gender and race. The data also contains information on child behavioral, educational and physical health outcomes, as well as extensive household characteristics, economic resources and parental behaviors and inputs. Results suggest that differences across nontraditional family structures are particularly prominent for child health outcomes and that the gender of the resident parent is empirically important, more so than the presence of a cohabiting or married step-parent. Children in single father families have lesser access to health care yet enjoy better health outcomes than those in other families, even after controlling for economic resources (and inputs). In contrast, few differences are found between grandparent-headed families and other non-parent families. While we explore alternative explanations for these results, our cross-sectional data and complex set of family structure variables preclude isolating causal relationships; instead, our analyses yield empirically important distinctions that point to promising avenues for future research.
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Family Meals and Child Academic and Behavioral Outcomes
Daniel Miller, Jane Waldfogel & Wen-Jui Han
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study investigates the link between the frequency of family breakfasts and dinners and child academic and behavioral outcomes in a panel sample of 21,400 children aged 5-15. It complements previous work by examining younger and older children separately and by using information on a large number of controls and rigorous analytic methods to discern whether there is causal relation between family meal frequency (FMF) and child outcomes. In child fixed-effects models, which controlled for unchanging aspects of children and their families, there were no significant (p < .05) relations between FMF and either academic or behavioral outcomes, a novel finding. These results were robust to various specifications of the FMF variables and did not differ by child age.
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"Driven to the Commission of This Crime": Women and Infanticide in Baltimore, 1835-1860
Katie Hemphill
Journal of the Early Republic, Fall 2012, Pages 437-461
Abstract:
In 1838, Baltimore Coroner John I. Gross penned an open letter noting an "alarming increase" of infanticide in the city and pleading for a solution. In the discussion that followed, contributors voiced varied opinions regarding the motives underlying infanticide and the best means of reducing its occurrence, but were largely united in portraying the female infanticide in middle-class terms. Coroner's inquest records reveal that most of the women suspected of and arrested for infanticide throughout the antebellum period were in fact poor and often racially and socially marginalized. Infant mortality, while universally common, was particularly prevalent in working-class communities, and the process by which infant deaths were determined to be "suspicious" and worthy of investigation were biased against the poor. Yet, inquest proceedings cannot be contained within a simple narrative of social control. The poor were active participants in inquests, both as witnesses and as jurors, and they brought to the proceedings their own knowledge of the persons involved as well as their own ideas about moral economies of reproduction. Poor women accused of infanticide defended themselves (among other ways) by appropriating the middle-class narratives of seduction to disclaim their responsibility in infanticide cases and displace it onto male villains. In doing so, they attempted to garner public sympathy and undermine the justness of the proceedings against them. They did so with remarkable success, as no women were convicted of infanticide in Baltimore during the middle third of the nineteenth century.
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Skyler Hawk et al.
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This 3-year, multi-informant study examined whether youths' perceptions of parental privacy invasion predicted lower parental knowledge over time, as a function of increased adolescent secrecy. Participants were 497 Dutch adolescents (Time 1 M = 13 years, SD = 0.5; 57% boys) and both parents. Higher youth-reported invasion predicted lower father- and mother-reported knowledge 1 year later. A link between privacy invasion and youths' increased secrecy mediated the association between privacy invasion and mothers' lower knowledge. Further, mothers' perceptions of adolescent secrecy mediated the association between adolescent-reported secrecy and mothers' knowledge. No mediation existed for father-report models. The results suggest that privacy invasion is counterproductive to parents' efforts to remain knowledgeable about youths, due to increased adolescent secrecy. We discuss the implications for family communication processes and successful privacy negotiations during adolescence.
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Marriage Institutions and Sibling Competition: Evidence from South Asia
Tom Vogl
NBER Working Paper, August 2012
Abstract:
Using data from South Asia, this paper examines how arranged marriage cultivates rivalry among sisters. During marriage search, parents with multiple daughters reduce the reservation quality for an older daughter's groom, rushing her marriage to allow sufficient time to marry off her younger sisters. Relative to younger brothers, younger sisters increase a girl's marriage risk; relative to younger singleton sisters, younger twin sisters have the same effect. These effects intensify in marriage markets with lower sex ratios or greater parental involvement in marriage arrangements. In contrast, older sisters delay a girl's marriage. Because girls leave school when they marry and face limited earnings opportunities when they reach adulthood, the number of sisters has well-being consequences over the lifecycle. Younger sisters cause earlier school-leaving, lower literacy, a match to a husband with less education and a less-skilled occupation, and (marginally) lower adult economic status. Data from a broader set of countries indicate that these cross-sister pressures on marriage age are common throughout the developing world, although the schooling costs vary by setting.
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Breastfeeding and Children's Early Cognitive Outcomes
Donna Rothstein
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper investigates whether breastfeeding affects 5-6 year old children's cognitive development using three U.S. longitudinal data sets. The results for the full samples roughly point to a dose-response effect of breastfeeding on children's cognitive outcomes, with breastfeeding 6 months or more associated with about a tenth of a standard deviation increase in cognitive test scores. The breastfeeding effects do not appear to be due to differences in maternal employment, cognitive ability, or parenting skills. In contrast, within-sibling results show no statistically significant breastfeeding effect.
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Rebecca Ryan & Amy Claessens
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most children in the U.S. today will experience one or more changes in family structure. The present study explores the implications of this trend for child development by investigating the conditions under which family structure changes matter most to child well-being. Using data from the Maternal and Child Supplement of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,492), it estimates how changes in family structure experienced during 4 different developmental periods relate to concurrent and subsequent changes in children's behavioral trajectories. We estimate associations separately for children born to married and unwed parents to determine whether family instability has different associations with children's behavior across policy-relevant family types. Results indicate that changes in family structure during the first 3 years of life predict children's behavioral development more consistently than later changes, changes into a single-parent family have different implications for children's development than changes into a blended family, and changes in family structure matter more for children born to married parents than children born to unwed parents.
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Cross-national Variation in the Influence of Employment Hours on Child Care Time
Liana Sayer & Janet Gornick
European Sociological Review, August 2012, Pages 421-442
Abstract:
Parental time investments in children are essential inputs in children's present and future well-being. The ability of parents to make choices about child care time that are free from money and time constraints varies considerably, however, by employment status and country. We use nationally representative time diary data from nine countries with different gendered working time regimes to investigate how employment hours influence child care time, and whether parents in countries with high maternal employment rates, long work hours among mothers and fathers, and limited family policies have a deficit in child care time. We instead find that child care hours are lowest among French and Swedish mothers, and among French fathers, countries with relatively high parental employment rates but also short work hour cultures. We document a range of employment penalties on child care time among employed mothers and fathers in English-speaking countries and Slovenia, and smaller or no penalties among parents in the Netherlands and Nordic countries. Findings suggest employment associations with child care are not only mediated by gendered work hour cultures, but also culturally distinct parenting ideologies.
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Jason Fletcher, Nicole Hair & Barbara Wolfe
NBER Working Paper, August 2012
Abstract:
Using a sample of sibling pairs from the PSID-CDS, we examine the effects of sibling health status on early educational outcomes. We find that sibling developmental disability and externalizing behavior are associated with reductions in math and language achievement. Estimated spillovers for developmental disability are large and robust to both a rich set of family-level controls and a fixed effects analysis that exploits the availability of in-sample cousins. Our results suggest the importance of siblings in the determination of children's human capital as well as the potential for typically uncounted benefits to improving children's health through family multiplier effects.
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Parental Educational Attainment and Sense of Control in Mid- and Late-Adulthood
Michael Ward
Developmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Sense of control is greater among children who grow up in households of higher socioeconomic status. It is unclear if this childhood advantage persists throughout life or if schooling and adulthood experiences override any early childhood advantage. Using data from 2 nationally representative samples of primarily middle-aged (National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, or MIDUS), and older adults (Health and Retirement Study, or HRS), I tested if personal mastery and perceived constraints in adulthood were associated with the educational attainment of the participant's father or mother, adjusting for participant's education level, income, and other demographic characteristics. In both samples, personal mastery was not associated with either parent's education level, but perceived constraints had a graded inverse association with mother's education level. These results indicate that childhood experiences continue to be associated with perceived constraints, even in later life, and may not be completely overridden by adult experiences.
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Lone and Partnered Mothers' Childcare Time Within Context in Four Countries
Lyn Craig & Killian Mullan
European Sociological Review, August 2012, Pages 512-526
Abstract:
We use data from nationally representative time-use surveys to compare and contrast lone and partnered mothers' childcare time in four countries with different social norms and policy orientations towards mother-care and work-family reconciliation: Australia, the United States, France, and Denmark (N = 8,031). We decompose time with children into primary activity care tasks: (i) physical care, (ii) talk-based interactive activities, (iii) accompanying children, and also measure (iv) additional time spent with children net of specific care activities. We find that, on average, mothers in Australia and the United States spend substantially longer each day with children net of specific care activities than mothers in France and Denmark, but that primary activity care tasks are relatively uniform cross-nationally. In France and the United States, lone mothers spend less time with their children in total than partnered mothers. Gaps are widest in the United States, where, uniquely, lone mothers also do less primary activity of child care than partnered mothers.
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Spanking and Child Development During the First 5 Years of Life
Kathryn Maguire-Jack, Andrea Gromoske & Lawrence Berger
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,870) and cross-lagged path analysis, the authors examined whether spanking at ages 1 and 3 is adversely associated with cognitive skills and behavior problems at ages 3 and 5. The authors found spanking at age 1 was associated with a higher level of spanking and externalizing behavior at age 3, and spanking at age 3 was associated with a higher level of internalizing and externalizing behavior at age 5. The associations between spanking at age 1 and behavioral problems at age 5 operated predominantly through ongoing spanking at age 3. The authors did not find an association between spanking at age 1 and cognitive skills at age 3 or 5.
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The Impact of Pretend Play on Children's Development: A Review of the Evidence
Angeline Lillard et al.
Psychological Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Pretend play has been claimed to be crucial to children's healthy development. Here we examine evidence for this position versus 2 alternatives: Pretend play is 1 of many routes to positive developments (equifinality), and pretend play is an epiphenomenon of other factors that drive development. Evidence from several domains is considered. For language, narrative, and emotion regulation, the research conducted to date is consistent with all 3 positions but insufficient to draw conclusions. For executive function and social skills, existing research leans against the crucial causal position but is insufficient to differentiate the other 2. For reasoning, equifinality is definitely supported, ruling out a crucially causal position but still leaving open the possibility that pretend play is epiphenomenal. For problem solving, there is no compelling evidence that pretend play helps or is even a correlate. For creativity, intelligence, conservation, and theory of mind, inconsistent correlational results from sound studies and nonreplication with masked experimenters are problematic for a causal position, and some good studies favor an epiphenomenon position in which child, adult, and environment characteristics that go along with play are the true causal agents. We end by considering epiphenomenalism more deeply and discussing implications for preschool settings and further research in this domain. Our take-away message is that existing evidence does not support strong causal claims about the unique importance of pretend play for development and that much more and better research is essential for clarifying its possible role.
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Sibling differences in parent-child conflict and risky behavior: A three-wave longitudinal study
Chun Bun Lam, Anna Solmeyer & Susan McHale
Journal of Family Psychology, August 2012, Pages 523-531
Abstract:
To better understand why siblings growing up in the same family are often as different as unrelated individuals, this study explored the role of differential experiences with parents in the development of sibling differences. Cross-lagged models tested directions of effect by examining whether differential parent-child conflict predicted sibling differences in risky behavior over time, or vice versa. Participants were mothers, fathers, and the 2 eldest adolescent siblings (mean ages at Time 1 = 15.12 and 12.58 years) from 355 European American, working- and middle-class families. On 3 occasions over a 2-year period, mothers and fathers reported on their conflict with each of the 2 siblings, and siblings reported on their own risky behavior. Results revealed that, controlling for sibling age differences and average levels of conflict and risky behavior at Time 1, youths who had more conflict with their mothers and fathers in relation to their siblings subsequently engaged in relatively more risky behavior. Also, youths who engaged in more risky behavior in relation to their siblings experienced relatively more conflict with their fathers, but not mothers, at later time points. Findings highlight the importance of examining both family dynamics and child characteristics in understanding sibling differentiation, and illuminate potential differences in parenting processes involving mothers versus fathers.
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Gary Sherman et al.
Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prosocially oriented individuals tend to respond to care-relevant stimuli in a highly embodied manner. Research on facets of prosocial orientation-such as empathy-and embodiment has focused on processes triggered by the perception of others' distress or pain. We suspect that the predisposition among prosocially oriented individuals toward having embodied responses to care-relevant stimuli might be more extensive. We tested the specific hypothesis that prosocial orientation would predict the likelihood of responding to cuteness (an understudied care stimulus that does not involve overt distress) with the physical embodiment of care: increased physical carefulness. In 2 studies, for prosocially oriented women only, cuteness elicited greater physical carefulness in a manual precision task. For such women, the elevated state of care elicited by cuteness cues is not only a coordinated set of feelings and motives but it is also a physically embodied state characterized by heightened carefulness in one's physical movements.
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Deborah Capaldi et al.
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three generations of participants were assessed over approximately 27 years, and intergenerational prediction models of growth in the third generation's (G3) externalizing and internalizing problems across ages 3-9 years were examined. The sample included 103 fathers and mothers (G2), at least 1 parent (G1) for all of the G2 fathers (99 mothers, 72 fathers), and 185 G3 offspring (83 boys, 102 girls) of G2, with prospective data available on the G2 fathers beginning at age 9 years. Behavior of the G2 mother, along with father contact and mother age at birth were included in the models. Intergenerational associations in psychopathology were modest, and much of the transmission occurred via contextual risk within the family of procreation.
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Kathy Stansbury et al.
Behavior and Social Issues, 2012, Pages 80-114
Abstract:
We examined differences in male and female caregivers' behavioral styles, and their use of negative or positive touch in noncompliance episodes with preschool-aged children that occurred in public settings. Coders reliably coded adult caregiver behavioral style (authoritarian-type, authoritative-type, and permissive-type), positive and negative touch, and children's latency to comply, as well as the child's demeanor at the end of the noncompliance event. Surprisingly, almost a quarter of all children were touched negatively by adults during these public episodes. Contrary to expectations based on self-report and laboratory studies, male caregivers were more likely to use touch in noncompliance episodes with children, and more likely to use positive touch, than female caregivers. Adult caregiver behavioral style, and positive versus negative touch were each related to children's responses in the noncompliance episodes. This work extends the findings of earlier studies about adult caregiver behavioral styles and highlights the use of positive versus negative touch as an important behavioral context for compliance requests of young children. Further, child demeanor is a crucial measure of the success of parenting behavior in noncompliance episodes because it indexes behavior occurring after compliance occurs, but which has the potential to be a significant influence on family harmony. The use of naturalistic observational methodology is a suggested as a critical step in validating findings on harsh discipline and corporal punishment that rely on methods in which social desirability may be a confound.
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Bidirectional Relations Between Authoritative Parenting and Adolescents' Prosocial Behaviors
Laura Padilla-Walker et al.
Journal of Research on Adolescence, September 2012, Pages 400-408
Abstract:
This study examined the bidirectional relations between authoritative parenting and adolescents' prosocial behavior over a 1-year time period. Data were taken from Time 2 and 3 of the Flourishing Families Project, and included reports from 319 two-parent families with an adolescent child (M age of child at Time 2 = 12.34, SD = 1.06, 52% girls). Cross-lag analyses supported bidirectional relations between parenting and prosocial behavior with particular emphasis on the role of the adolescents' prosocial behavior on subsequent parenting. Results also varied as a function of the reporter. Discussion focuses on the implications for understanding the multifaceted nature of prosocial development in adolescence.