Parent or guardian
Paradoxical Consequences of Prohibitions
Sana Sheikh & Ronnie Janoff-Bulman
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Explanations based in attribution theory claim that strong external controls such as parental restrictiveness and punishment undermine moral internalization. In contrast, 3 studies provide evidence that parental punishment does socialize morality, but of a particular sort: a morality focused on prohibitions (i.e., proscriptive orientation) rather than positive obligations (i.e., prescriptive orientation). Study 1 found young adults' accounts of parental restrictiveness and punishment activated their sensitivity to prohibitions and predicted a proscriptive orientation. Consistent with the greater potency of temptations for proscriptively oriented children, as well as past research linking shame to proscriptive morality, Study 2 found that restrictive parenting was also associated with greater suppression of temptations. Finally, Studies 3A and 3B found that suppressing these immoral thoughts is paradoxically harder for those with strong proscriptive orientations; more specifically, priming a proscriptive (versus prescriptive) orientation and inducing mental suppression of "immoral" thoughts led to the most ego depletion for those with restrictive parents. Overall, individuals who had restrictive parents had the lowest self-regulatory ability to resist their "immoral" temptations after prohibitions were activated. In contrast to common attributional explanations, these studies suggest that harsh external control by parents does not undercut moral socialization but rather undermines individuals' ability to resist temptation.
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Opting Out among Women with Elite Education
Joni Hersch
Vanderbilt University Working Paper, March 2013
Abstract:
Whether highly educated women are exiting the labor force to care for their children has generated a great deal of media attention, even though academic studies find little evidence of opting out. This paper shows that female graduates of elite institutions have lower labor market involvement than their counterparts from less selective institutions. Although elite graduates are more likely to earn advanced degrees, marry at later ages, and have higher expected earnings, there is little difference in labor market activity by college selectivity among women without children and women who are not married. But the presence of children is associated with far lower labor market activity among married elite graduates. Most women eventually marry and have children, and the net effect is that labor market activity is on average lower among elite graduates than among those from less selective institutions. The largest gap in labor market activity between graduates of elite institutions and less selective institutions is among MBAs, with married mothers who are graduates of elite institutions 30 percentage points less likely to be employed full-time than graduates of less selective institutions.
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Dan Black, Natalia Kolesnikova & Lowell Taylor
Journal of Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper documents a little-noticed feature of U.S. labor markets - very large variation in the labor supply of married women across cities. We focus on cross-city differences in commuting times as a potential explanation for this variation. We start with a model in which commuting times introduce non-convexities into the budget set. Empirical evidence is consistent with the model's predictions: Labor force participation rates of married women are negatively correlated with the metropolitan area commuting time. Also, metropolitan areas with larger increases in average commuting time in 1980-2000 had slower growth in the labor force participation of married women.
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Engaging Absent Fathers: Lessons from Paternity Establishment Programs
Maya Rossin-Slater
Columbia University Working Paper, November 2012
Abstract:
Policies concerned with improving the well-being of disadvantaged single-mother households often seek to engage unmarried fathers with their families. However, by providing a formal method for father involvement that is an alternative to marriage, such policies create an "intermediate" option that can have unintended consequences: deterring some parents from marriage and lowering involvement among otherwise married fathers. This paper provides the first comprehensive causal analysis of in-hospital voluntary paternity establishment (IHVPE), a major U.S. program that aims to involve unmarried fathers with their families, and places the findings in the context of a conceptual framework in which parents trade-off access to children with their match quality. Using variation in the timing of IHVPE initiation, I show that while IHVPE increases paternity establishment rates by a substantial 40 percent, it also reduces the likelihood of parental marriage: for every additional paternity established, there are 0.13 fewer parental marriages occurring post-childbirth. Although unmarried fathers become more involved along some dimensions, I find evidence of a net reduction in several involvement measures once I account for the decrease in marriage. On the whole, measures of child welfare such as total household income and child mental and physical health are unaffected by IHVPE.
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Paula England & Anjula Srivastava
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
We explore effects of parents' education on how much time they spend in child care, using a sample of married and cohabiting parents from the 2003-2011 American Time Use Study. We find that more educated parents spend more time in child care, despite having higher employment rates. For men, there is some mixed evidence that their own education increases their child care time, but much stronger evidence that their child care time is influenced by their wives' education. For women, it is largely their own education affecting their child care time. We also assess whether the higher earnings of the well educated, which could be used to outsource housework, explains why they spend more time in child care. Results do not support this hypothesis; educational differences don't change much under controls for his and her earnings or housework. This suggests that the effects of education on child care result from different cultural conceptions of child rearing held by the well educated, especially by women, whose education affects both their own and their husbands' child care time.
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Childless Women's Time With Children: A Focus on Educational Differences
Steven Martin & Sarah Kendig
Journal of Family Issues, June 2013, Pages 828-853
Abstract:
This study examines time with children among women who remain childless in young to middle adulthood. The authors identify biologically childless women aged 25 to 44 years in the June 2004-2008 Current Population Survey, and use their subsequent time use diaries in the 2004-2009 American Time Use Survey to measure their time with children. The authors pay particular attention to time with children who are not one's "own" (by adoption or marriage) and to differences across educational groups of childless women. It is found that childless women frequently spend time with children, and childless women with no 4-year college degree are almost twice as likely to spend time with children as childless women with a 4-year degree. The authors also show how educational differences in childless women's time with children are mediated by work patterns, residential arrangements, and especially union status. The findings suggest large class differences in how women experience the boundary between childlessness and parenthood.
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Economic Conditions and Child Abuse
Jason Lindo, Jessamyn Schaller & Benjamin Hansen
NBER Working Paper, April 2013
Abstract:
Although a huge literature spanning several disciplines documents an association between poverty and child abuse, researchers have not found persuasive evidence that economic downturns increase abuse, despite their impacts on family income. In this paper, we address this seeming contradiction. Using county-level child abuse data spanning 1996 to 2009 from the California Department of Justice, we estimate the extent to which a county's reported abuse rate diverges from its trend when its economic conditions diverge from trend, controlling for statewide annual shocks. The results of this analysis indicate that overall measures of economic conditions are not strongly related to rates of abuse. However, focusing on overall measures of economic conditions masks strong opposing effects of economic conditions facing males and females: male layoffs increase rates of abuse whereas female layoffs reduce rates of abuse. These results are consistent with a theoretical framework that builds on family-time-use models and emphasizes differential risks of abuse associated with a child's time spent with different caregivers.
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Family Proximity, Childcare, and Women's Labor Force Attachment
Janice Compton & Robert Pollak
Journal of Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We show that close geographical proximity to mothers or mothers-in-law has a substantial positive effect on the labor supply of married women with young children. We argue that the mechanism through which proximity increases labor supply is the availability of childcare. We interpret availability broadly enough to include not only regular scheduled childcare during work hours but also an insurance aspect of proximity (e.g., a mother or mother-in-law who can to provide irregular or unanticipated childcare). Using two large datasets, the National Survey of Families and Households and the public use files of the U.S. Census, we find that the predicted probability of employment and labor force participation is 4-10 percentage points higher for married women with young children living in close proximity to their mothers or their mothers-in-law compared with those living further away.
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The Importance of Children's ADHD for Parents' Relationship Stability and Labor Supply
Anette Primdal Kvist, Helena Skyt Nielsen & Marianne Simonsen
Social Science & Medicine, July 2013, Pages 30-38
Abstract:
Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have much worse long-term outcomes than other children. This paper uses Danish register-based data on children born from 1990-1997 to investigate the significance of children's ADHD for parents' outcomes. We observe 172,299 pairs of parents from 1990-2007 of which 2,457 have a firstborn child diagnosed with ADHD and 169,842 have a firstborn child without ADHD. Ten years after the birth of the child, parents of children diagnosed with ADHD have a 75% higher probability of having dissolved their relationship and a 7-13% lower labor supply. Parents of children with ADHD are, however, particularly disadvantaged in terms of socioeconomic background and mental health. We explain about half of the gaps in partnership stability and labor supply when these factors are taken into consideration, but a statistically and economically significant gap remains to be explained. Additionally, we find that the receipt of a diagnosis to some extent moderates the influence of underlying ADHD on partnership stability. Still, our study concludes that poor child health in terms of ADHD reduces parental socioeconomic status (SES) by lowering their labor supply (and earnings) and reducing relationship stability.
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Father absence and age at first birth in a western sample
Lynda Boothroyd et al.
American Journal of Human Biology, May/June 2013, Pages 366-369
Objectives: Although a large literature has shown links between "father absence" during early childhood, and earlier puberty and sexual behavior in girls in Western populations, there are only a few studies which have looked at timing of reproduction, and only one of these fully incorporated childless respondents to investigate whether father absence is associated with increased hazard of becoming a parent at one time point (early) more than another. Here we sought to clarify exactly when, if at all, father absence increased the likelihood of first birth in a Western sample.
Methods: An online sample of 954 women reported on their childhood living circumstances, their age of menarche, first coitus, first pregnancy, and first birth.
Results: Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier plots showed an increased risk of becoming a parent for father absent women in their 20s, but no overall greater likelihood of parenthood.
Conclusion: These data support the suggestion that father absence is associated with an acceleration of reproductive behavior in Western samples, rather than a simple increase in likelihood of reproduction.
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Causal Effects of Parental Leave on Adolescents' Household Work
Andreas Kotsadam & Henning Finseraas
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
We exploit two Norwegian parental leave reforms to investigate their effects on adolescents' household work. The main reform increased the parental leave time by 7 weeks, 4 of which were reserved for the father, while the second reform raised only the general parental leave time by 3 weeks. We find a robust and substantial effect of the main reform implying that adolescent girls born immediately after the reform are less likely to do household work. By analyzing the two parental leave reforms together, we show that the father quota drives the results.
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Maltreatment in childhood and body concerns in adulthood
Leah Brooke & Alexander Mussap
Journal of Health Psychology, May 2013, Pages 620-626
Objective: We examined the relationship between maltreatment in childhood and body concerns in adulthood.
Method: A community sample of 156 women and 143 men completed measures of maltreatment - frequency of sexual abuse, physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse and emotional neglect - in childhood. They also reported current dissatisfaction with body weight and shape and drive for thinness and drive for muscle.
Results and conclusions: Childhood maltreatment was associated with drive for muscle in women and body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness in men. The results provide some evidence that adverse conditions in childhood can be associated with gender-atypical body concerns in adulthood.
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Fighting for Independence: Significant Others' Goals for Oneself Incite Reactance among the Powerful
Ena Inesi & Kimberly Rios
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We tested the prediction that power increases people's tendencies to act against the goals their close significant others have for them. Participants in Study 1 all reported in a pre-test that their mother wanted them to achieve, but that they themselves were relatively less interested in achieving. A week later, high-power (but not neutral-power) participants who were reminded of their mother were subsequently less likely to pursue an achievement goal. Study 2 replicated this pattern of results with romantic partners and showed that the effects were strongest when individuals were personally less interested in pursuing a goal they believed their significant other held for them. In Study 3, we looked at mothers and healthy eating goals, and found that the predicted pattern only emerged for close significant others. Further, feelings of reactance mediated high-power participants' tendencies to act against significant-other goals that they themselves did not hold.
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Pacifier Cleaning Practices and Risk of Allergy Development
Bill Hesselmar et al.
Pediatrics, forthcoming
Objective: Immune stimulation through exposure to commensal microbes may protect against allergy development. Oral microbes may be transferred from parents to infants via pacifiers. We investigated whether pacifier cleaning practices affected the risk of allergy development.
Methods: A birth-cohort of 184 infants was examined for clinical allergy and sensitization to airborne and food allergens at 18 and 36 months of age and, in addition, promptly on occurrence of symptoms. Pacifier use and pacifier cleaning practices were recorded during interviews with the parents when the children were 6 months old. The oral microbiota of the infants was characterized by analysis of saliva samples collected at 4 months of age.
Results: Children whose parents "cleaned" their pacifier by sucking it (n = 65) were less likely to have asthma (odds ratio [OR] 0.12; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.01-0.99), eczema (OR 0.37; 95% CI 0.15-0.91), and sensitization (OR 0.37; 95% CI 0.10-1.27) at 18 months of age than children whose parents did not use this cleaning technique (n = 58). Protection against eczema remained at age 36 months (hazard ratio 0.51; P = .04). Vaginal delivery and parental pacifier sucking yielded independent and additive protective effects against eczema development. The salivary microbiota differed between children whose parents cleaned their pacifier by sucking it and children whose parents did not use this practice.
Conclusions: Parental sucking of their infant's pacifier may reduce the risk of allergy development, possibly via immune stimulation by microbes transferred to the infant via the parent's saliva.
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Holly Ventura Miller & J.C. Barnes
Criminal Justice and Behavior, June 2013, Pages 671-689
Abstract:
Parental incarceration has been linked to a wide range of negative intergenerational consequences, including involvement in the criminal justice system. Prior research indicates that those who experience episodes of parental incarceration during childhood are significantly more likely to report contact with the police, arrest, conviction, and incarceration. There remains, however, considerable debate as to whether these relationships are causal or merely correlational. Although many theoretical frameworks offer guidance in understanding these associations (e.g., social learning, strain, labeling), less work has focused on genetic risk factors. Using data from a nationally representative sample of American youth, we conduct a series of analyses to assess whether genetic risk factors, measured by three dopamine polymorphisms (DAT1, DRD2, and DRD4) confound the association between paternal incarceration and child's arrest and incarceration. Results suggest that genetic risk may confound the relationship between father's incarceration and child's arrest but not incarceration. These findings are discussed relative to theoretical development and existing empirical evidence. Directions for future research in this vein are also presented.
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Marianne Junger et al.
European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, June 2013, Pages 117-133
Abstract:
Previous studies documented that crime is heavily concentrated in families. However, many studies relied on relatively small samples, often males and information on criminal involvement was self-reported. The present study investigates: (1) the prevalence of arrests in three generations; (2) the concentration of offenders and arrests within families; (3) the relationships between arrests among the relatives; (4) the relationship between arrests and family violence. A complete cohort of the families in which a child was born in a Dutch city was selected, and the arrests of all known family members (siblings, parents and grandparents) were investigated. Results showed that 7.2 % of the mothers and 18 % of the fathers had been arrested. The likelihood of parental arrests was related to the likelihood of grandparental arrests. There was clear evidence for assortative mating: when the mother was arrested, the likelihood that the father was arrested was increased with a factor five. Maternal arrests were also related to arrests of her parents-in-law. Arrests are heavily concentrated within families, 7.8 % of the families account for 52.3 % of the suspects. Arrests in family members constitute a major risk factor for poor developmental outcomes, such as criminal behavior. At the time of birth, it is possible to use information on arrests to select children who are at relatively high risk for the target of prevention efforts.Implications for prevention policies are discussed.
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Gender Bias in Parental Leave: Evidence from Sweden
Elly-Ann Lindström
Journal of Family and Economic Issues, June 2013, Pages 235-248
Abstract:
This paper estimates the effect of child gender on mothers' and fathers' parental leave using population-wide register data from Statistics Sweden and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency. The results showed that a first-born son increased fathers' parental leave with 0.6 days (1.5 %) and decreased mothers' leave by a similar amount. Both the sign and size of this effect is in line with previous research, showing that these types of biases exist also in a society with top ratings on gender equality. However, non-traditional families, with high maternal relative earnings and/or educational levels, showed even larger gender biases which suggest that it may be mothers, rather than fathers, that are the driving force behind this child gender bias.
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Jennifer Kaminski et al.
American Journal of Public Health, June 2013, Pages 1058-1066
Objectives: We evaluated Legacy for Children, a public health strategy to improve child health and development among low-income families.
Methods: Mothers were recruited prenatally or at the birth of a child to participate in Legacy parenting groups for 3 to 5 years. A set of 2 randomized trials in Miami, Florida, and Los Angeles, California, between 2001 and 2009 assessed 574 mother-child pairs when the children were 6, 12, 24, 36, 48, and 60 months old. Intent-to-treat analyses from 12 to 60 months compared groups on child behavioral and socioemotional outcomes.
Results: Children of mothers in the intervention group were at lower risk for behavioral concerns at 24 months and socioemotional problems at 48 months in Miami, and lower risk for hyperactive behavior at 60 months in Los Angeles. Longitudinal analyses indicated that children of intervention mothers in Miami were at lower risk for behavior problems from 24 to 60 months of age.
Conclusions: Randomized controlled trials documented effectiveness of the Legacy model over time while allowing for implementation adaptations by 2 different sites. Broadly disseminable, parent-focused prevention models such as Legacy have potential for public health impact. These investments in prevention might reduce the need for later intervention strategies.
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Life Experiences of Instability and Sexual Risk Behaviors Among High-Risk Adolescent Females
Molly Secor-Turner et al.
Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, forthcoming
Context: Understanding the interplay of multiple contexts of adolescents' sexual risk behaviors is essential to helping them avoid pregnancy and STDs. Although a body of research has identified multiple individual- and family-level variables associated with adolescents' sexual risk behaviors, relatively few studies have examined relationships between these behaviors and latent indicators of unstable, chaotic environments.
Methods: In 2007-2008, a sample of 241 sexually active adolescent females who were at high risk for pregnancy and STDs were recruited through two school-based clinics and two community clinics in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Confirmatory factor analysis was used with baseline data to specify latent constructs of individual risk and family disengagement. Structural equation models examined longitudinal relationships between baseline measures of these constructs and sexual risk behaviors assessed six months later.
Results: The latent construct of individual risk encompassed substance use, violence perpetration, violence victimization and having witnessed violence; that of family disengagement included family disconnection, poor family communication and perceived lack of safety at home. Baseline level of individual risk was positively associated with number of male sex partners six months later (path coefficient, 0.2); it was not associated with consistent condom use at follow-up. Level of family disengagement was negatively associated with condom use consistency six months later (-0.3), but was not associated with number of male sex partners.
Conclusions: To meet the health needs of vulnerable adolescents, health systems should incorporate coordinated and interdisciplinary services that acknowledge adolescents' relevant familial and social contexts.
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Matricide and Stepmatricide Victims and Offenders: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Arrest Data
Kathleen Heide
Behavioral Sciences & the Law, March/April 2013, Pages 203-214
Abstract:
Almost all of the clinical and empirical literature on female parricide victims focuses on mothers killed, with only little information available on stepmothers murdered. This study is the first to compare the victim, offender, and case correlates in incidents when mothers and stepmothers were killed. Supplementary Homicide Report Data for 1976-2007 were used to investigate similarities and differences between the two female victim types in the United States. Similarities between stepmothers and mothers included that more than 70% were White and killed in single victim, single offender incidents. Their killers were adult sons in between 67% and 87% of incidents. Several significant differences emerged with respect to age, involvement in multiple offender incidents, and weapon use. Stepmothers and their stepchildren, relative to mothers and their offspring, were significantly younger. Sixty-four percent of stepchildren, compared with 35% of biological children, were under age 25 at the time of their arrest for murder. A higher percentage of juveniles than adult killers was involved in multiple offender (MO) incidents involving mothers. Relative to their male counterparts, higher percentages of female juveniles were involved in MO incidents involving the deaths of mothers and stepmothers. A higher proportion of female adults, relative to their male counterparts, were involved in MO matricide incidents. Offenders who killed stepmothers, relative to those who killed mothers, were significantly more likely to use guns. Juvenile matricide offenders were significantly more likely to use firearms than their adult counterparts. Possible reasons for the differences are discussed in the conclusion.
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Incentive Effects of Parents' Transfers to Children: An Artefactual Field Experiment
Sinan Unur et al.
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
The standard altruism model within the family predicts that transfers will be inversely related to the recipient's income. Thus, parents will implicitly insure children against bad luck. This insurance may cause children to take undesirable risks. Anticipating this moral hazard, parents may alter their transfers. Using an artefactual field experiment, we show that parents use transfers to compensate for differences between their teenage children when incomes are independent of children's actions. However, when a potential incentive problem is introduced, parents generally move away from compensating transfers. In addition, we find that the teenage children are more likely to take unfair bets when their behavior is not detectable by their parents.
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Anja Euser et al.
Developmental Science, May 2013, Pages 409-427
Abstract:
The present study examined the role of parental rearing behavior in adolescents' risky decision-making and the brain's feedback processing mechanisms. Healthy adolescent participants (n = 110) completed the EMBU-C, a self-report questionnaire on perceived parental rearing behaviors between 2006 and 2008 (T1). Subsequently, after an average of 3.5 years, we assessed (a) risky decision-making during performance of the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART); (b) event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by positive (gain) and negative feedback (loss) during the BART; and (c) self-reported substance use behavior (T2). Age-corrected regression analyses showed that parental rejection at T1 accounted for a unique and significant proportion of the variance in risk-taking during the BART; the more adolescents perceived their parents as rejecting, the more risky decisions were made. Higher levels of perceived emotional warmth predicted increased P300 amplitudes in response to positive feedback at T2. Moreover, these larger P300 amplitudes (gain) significantly predicted risky decision-making during the BART. Parental rearing behaviors during childhood thus seem to be significant predictors of both behavioral and electrophysiological indices of risky decision-making in adolescence several years later. This is in keeping with the notion that environmental factors such as parental rearing are important in explaining adolescents' risk-taking propensities.
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Viara Mileva-Seitz et al.
PLoS ONE, April 2013
Abstract:
Individual differences in maternal behavior are affected by both early life experiences and oxytocin, but little is known about genetic variation in oxytocin genes and its effects on mothering. We examined two polymorphisms in the oxytocin peptide gene OXT (rs2740210 and rs4813627) and one polymorphism in the oxytocin receptor gene OXTR (rs237885) in 187 Caucasian mothers at six months postpartum. For OXT, both rs2740210 and rs4813627 significantly associated with maternal vocalizing to the infant. These polymorphisms also interacted with the quality of care mothers experienced in early life, to predict variation in maternal instrumental care and postpartum depression. However, postpartum depression did not mediate the gene-environment effects of the OXT SNPs on instrumental care. In contrast, the OXTR SNP rs237885 did not associate with maternal behavior, but it did associate with pre-natal (but not post-natal) depression score. The findings illustrate the importance of variation in oxytocin genes, both alone and in interaction with early environment, as predictors of individual differences in human mothering. Furthermore, depression does not appear to have a causal role on the variation we report in instrumental care. This suggests that variation in instrumental care varies in association with a gene-early environment effect regardless of current depressive symptomatology. Finally, our findings highlight the importance of examining multiple dimensions of human maternal behavior in studies of genetic associations.
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Miguelina Germán et al.
Parenting, Summer 2013, Pages 169-177
Objective: This study examined maternal warmth as a moderator of the relation between harsh discipline practices and adolescent externalizing problems one year later in low-income, Mexican American families.
Design: Participants were 189 adolescents and their mothers who comprised the control group of a longitudinal intervention program.
Results: Maternal warmth protected adolescents from the negative effects of harsh discipline such that, at higher levels of maternal warmth, there was no relation between harsh discipline and externalizing problems after controlling for baseline levels of externalizing problems and other covariates. At lower levels of maternal warmth, there was a positive relation between harsh discipline practices and later externalizing problems.
Conclusion: To understand the role of harsh discipline in the development of Mexican American youth outcomes, researchers must consider contextual variables that may affect youths' perceptions of their parents' behavior, such as maternal warmth.
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Edward Norton, Lauren Hersch Nicholas & Sean Sheng-Hsiu Huang
NBER Working Paper, April 2013
Abstract:
Informal care is the largest source of long-term care for elderly, surpassing home health care and nursing home care. By definition, informal care is unpaid. It remains a puzzle why so many adult children give freely of their time. Transfers of time to the older generation may be balanced by financial transfers going to the younger generation. This leads to the question of whether informal care and inter-vivos transfers are causally related. We analyze data from the 1999 and 2003 waves of National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women. We examine whether the elderly parents give more inter-vivos monetary transfers to adult children who provide informal care, by examining both the extensive and intensive margins of financial transfers and of informal care. We find statistically significant results that a child who provides informal care is more likely to receive inter-vivos transfers than a sibling who does not. If a child does provide care, there is no statistically significant effect on the amount of the transfer.
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Do fathers work fewer paid hours when their female partner is the main or an equal earner?
Shireen Kanji
Work, Employment & Society, April 2013, Pages 326-342
Abstract:
Mothers are increasingly likely to be the main or equal earners in heterosexual couples with children. This study assesses the impact of the mother being the main or an equal earner on her partner's hours of work. The performance of normative gender roles predicts that fathers increase their hours whereas specialization theories predict they will decrease their hours. Another possibility is that fathers work fewer hours because they have a relatively weak labour market position. We test these alternative propositions using panel data on co-resident parents from the UK's Millennium Cohort Survey. The results show that fathers with a female partner who is the main earner work considerably fewer hours than other fathers. This also holds for equal-earner fathers to a lesser extent. In part, fathers work fewer hours because their partner is the main or an equal earner, but they are also less likely to work in occupations entailing long hours.