Speaking of the family
Reexamining the Verbal Environments of Children From Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds
Douglas Sperry, Linda Sperry & Peggy Miller
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Amid growing controversy about the oft‐cited “30‐million‐word gap,” this investigation uses language data from five American communities across the socioeconomic spectrum to test, for the first time, Hart and Risley's (1995) claim that poor children hear 30 million fewer words than their middle‐class counterparts during the early years of life. The five studies combined ethnographic fieldwork with longitudinal home observations of 42 children (18–48 months) interacting with family members in everyday life contexts. Results do not support Hart and Risley's claim, reveal substantial variation in vocabulary environments within each socioeconomic stratum, and suggest that definitions of verbal environments that exclude multiple caregivers and bystander talk disproportionately underestimate the number of words to which low‐income children are exposed.
Mothers' and Fathers' Well‐Being in Parenting Across the Arch of Child Development
Ann Meier et al.
Journal of Marriage and Family, forthcoming
Abstract:
Limited research on parental well‐being by child age suggests that parents are better off with very young children despite intense time demands of caring for them. This study uses the American Time Use Survey Well‐Being Module (N = 18,124) to assess how parents feel in activities with children of different ages. Results show that parents are worse off with adolescent children relative to young children. Parents report the lowest levels of happiness with adolescents relative to younger children, and mothers report more stress and less meaning with adolescents. Controlling for contextual features of parenting including activity type, solo parenting, and restorative time does not fully account for the adolescent disadvantage in fathers' happiness or mothers' stress. This study highlights adolescence as a particularly difficult stage for parental well‐being and shows that mothers shoulder stress that fathers do not, even after accounting for differences in the context of their parenting activities.
Caution! Men not at work: Gender-specific labor market conditions and child maltreatment
Jason Lindo, Jessamyn Schaller & Benjamin Hansen
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the effect of labor market conditions — measured through unemployment, mass layoffs and predicted employment — on child maltreatment using county-level data from California. Using these indicators, we separately estimate the effects of overall and gender-specific economic shocks. We find only modest evidence of a link between overall economic conditions and child maltreatment. However, analysis by gender reveals robust evidence that maltreatment decreases with indicators for male employment and increases with indicators for female employment. These opposite-signed effects are consistent with a theoretical framework that builds on household-time-use models and is supported by an analysis of time-use data, though we discuss other mechanisms that may also play important roles.
Childcare and commitment within households
Paula Gobbi
Journal of Economic Theory, July 2018, Pages 503-551
Abstract:
This paper proposes a semi-cooperative marital decision process to explain parental underinvestment in childcare. First, parents collectively choose the amount of labor to supply and, in a second step, they each choose the amount of childcare as the outcome of a Cournot game. Non-cooperative behavior stems from the lack of a credible commitment between spouses regarding the amount of childcare they each supply. The theoretical model is able to reproduce the fact that parental time with children increases both with an individual's education and with that of his/her partner. The limited commitment problem leads to an underinvestment in childcare and, hence, child quality: compared to the efficient provision of childcare, the semi-cooperative framework leads to an amount of child quality that is 45% lower.
The Intergenerational Transfer of the Employment Gender Gap
Venke Furre Haaland et al.
Labour Economics, June 2018, Pages 132-146
Abstract:
We investigate the extent to which the gap in employment rates between genders is shaped by the intergenerational transfer of gender norms. We employ rich longitudinal registry data covering the entire Norwegian population between the years 1970-2009 and show that a parsimonious set of family and municipality characteristics, measured in childhood, can explain a substantial part of the gender gap in full-time employment. The characteristics primarily operate through their impact on female (not male) employment. Children raised in ”high gender gap” conditions (low-educated parents, non-working mother and raised in a municipality at the highest decile for Christian Democrat voter support and lowest decile in maternal employment rates) demonstrate an employment gender gap almost four times larger than those raised in ”low gap” conditions. Our key childhood characteristics are also related to other career indicators (education, earnings, age at first marriage, age at first childbirth, being the primary breadwinner) in a way that is consistent with the transfer of gender norms. Thus, the gender employment gap appears to be shaped by intergenerational transfers of norms even in one of the most gender equal societies in the world.
Parenting Motivation and Consumer Decision-Making
Yexin Jessica Li, Kelly Haws & Vladas Griskevicius
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Parenting has been a central activity throughout human history, yet little research has examined the parental care motivation system on preferences and decision-making. Because successful parenting involves caring for both a child’s immediate and long-terms needs, we considered whether parenting motivation leads people to focus more on the present or on the future. A series of five experiments reveals that parenting motivation activates gender-specific stereotypes of parental roles, leading men to be more future-focused and women to be more present-focused. These shifts in temporal focus produce gender-differences in temporal preferences, as manifested in intertemporal decisions (preferences for smaller, immediate rewards versus larger, future ones) and attitudes toward a marketplace entity with inherent temporal tradeoffs (i.e., rent-to-own businesses). Reversing gender role stereotypes also reverses these gender differences, suggesting downstream effects of parenting motivation may be due, at least in part, to stereotypes about familial division of labor.
Is birth attendance a uniquely human feature? New evidence suggests that Bonobo females protect and support the parturient
Elisa Demuru, Pier Francesco Ferrari & Elisabetta Palagi
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Birth attendance has been proposed as a distinguishing feature of humans (Homo sapiens) and it has been linked to the difficulty of the delivery process in our species. Here, we provide the first quantitative study based on video-recordings of the social dynamics around three births in captive bonobos (Pan paniscus), human closest living relative along with the chimpanzee. We show that the general features defining traditional birth attendance in humans can also be identified in bonobos. As in humans, birth in bonobos was a social event, where female attendants provided protection and support to the parturient until the infant was born. Moreover, bystander females helped the parturient during the expulsive phase by performing manual gestures aimed at holding the infant. Our results on bonobos question the traditional view that the “obligatory” need for assistance was the main driving force leading to sociality around birth in our species. Indeed, birth in bonobos is not hindered by physical constraints and the mother is self-sufficient in accomplishing the delivery. Although further studies are needed both in captivity and in the wild, we suggest that the similarities observed between birth attendance in bonobos and humans might be related to the high level of female gregariousness in these species. In our view, the capacity of unrelated females to form strong social bonds and cooperate could have represented the evolutionary pre-requisite for the emergence of human midwifery.
Preliminary evidence that androgen signaling is correlated with men's everyday language
Jennifer Mascaro et al.
American Journal of Human Biology, forthcoming
Methods: We used unobtrusive, behavioral, real‐world ambulatory assessments of men in partnered heterosexual relationships to examine the relationship between plasma T levels, variation in the androgen receptor (AR) gene, and spontaneous, everyday language in three interpersonal contexts: with romantic partners, with co‐workers, and with their children.
Results: Men's T levels were positively correlated with their use of achievement words with their children, and the number of AR CAG trinucleotide repeats was inversely correlated with their use of anger and reward words with their children. T levels were positively correlated with sexual language and with use of swear words in the presence of their partner, but not in the presence of co‐workers or children.