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This paper reviews prior work on the media and discusses two approaches. The first focuses primarily on the content of media and assumes that children passively consume such content. In this view the media directly affects children (positively or negatively). In the second approach children are seen as active agents who appropriate and use media content in their lives. This paper extends prior research in line with the second approach as children as active consumers, by focusing on children spontaneous references and uses of media in their peer cultures in preschool and elementary school settings in the United States and Italy. The study find that children have complex knowledge of the media, use it in their collective peer routines, and that the use of media can contribute to children?s development of literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the massive sample size of the US census to compare rates of progress through elementary school for children of different family types, specifically children of same-sex cohabiting couples with children of various types of families headed by heterosexual parents. This paper represents the first (as far as the author knows) large sample nationally representative study of the children of same-sex couples. The results show that children of same-sex couples are as likely to make normal progress through school as the children of heterosexual cohabiting couples. Heterosexual married couples are the family type whose children have the lowest rates of grade retention, but the advantage of heterosexual married couples is mostly due to their higher SES. In general there are only modest differences in progress through school between children of different family types. Children of all family types (including children of same-sex couples) are far more likely to be making normal progress through school than children living in group quarters. Some implications are discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines birthday parties for young children (ages one to eight approximately) as a ritual of commercial enculturation, specifically in the USA. Drawing upon long, qualitative interviews with mothers the paper focuses on several key aspects of the birthday ritual, including: the specificity of the child's first birthday, the cake, theme, and the place of the birthday party in the cycle of other consumer holidays for children. The argument put forward in this discussion is that children enter the realm of commerical culture through subjective engagement with goods, commerical icons and meaning, rather than having it unilaterally imposed on the as is often posited. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on patterns of parental time involvement with children in the U.S. has increased in recent years. However, few studies have as their chief aim an understanding of if parents time involvement with children differently across diverse family forms. The key contribution of this paper is to elaborate extant knowledge by examining the structured time that children spend in a diverse array of two-parent families. Structured time spent by children is used to index the level of institutionalization of parenting in a particular type of union. We limit our investigation to households with two coresidential "romantically" involved adults (e.g., first marriage, remarriage, and cohabitation) because a deepened understanding of the heterogeneity of two-parent households as environments for children is important empirically and conceptually. Through our emphasis on households with two parents, or at least one biological and one potential parental figure, this paper may lead to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between family structure and child well-being. A second contribution of this paper is that we investigate the extent to which the level of institutionalization of parental unions, rather than the qualities that parents bring to the unions, contribute to the variation in children's structured time. Attempting to capture differences in the structure of parenting practices that are attributable to parental unions themselves is quite challenging, and we will be appropriately cautious in our interpretation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hurricane Katrina was one of the most devastating disasters in the history of the United States. In this paper we examine children's experiences in the aftermath of the catastrophe. Data was gathered through participant observation, focus groups, informal interviews, and in-depth formal interviews with parents, grandparents, day care service providers, school administrators, elementary school teachers, mental health service providers, religious leaders, and evacuee shelter coordinators in Louisiana. This research describes the experiences of children and their families in the days and weeks following the storm, discusses what was done on behalf of children to reduce their vulnerability, and illustrates various things that children did for themselves and for others in order to lessen the impacts of the disaster. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of family background in shaping educational opportunities and outcomes is central to international stratification research in education. Educational opportunities and outcomes are often measured in quantitative terms, such as years of schooling or educational transitions. The importance of more qualitative inequalities in educational opportunities (i.e. tracking and school sector) has been asserted in recent years. In the U.S., for instance, research demonstrates that private schooling is consequential for important life opportunities and outcomes, including advanced course options in high school, selective college attendance, and earnings. A number of studies have investigated the role of family socioeconomic status in granting access to private elementary and secondary schooling. In measuring family SES background, however, these studies do not consider wealth. In an era of increasing wealth inequality in the U.S. and policy efforts that may exacerbate asset inequality, including attempts to repeal the estate tax entirely, it is crucial to understand how family assets contribute to unequal educational opportunities and persistent inequality. This paper addresses this gap in the literature through investigating the effects of family background, particularly wealth, on children's access to private schooling using nationally representative data on children and families. The results suggest that wealth is a positive and significant predictor of private school attendance, net of controls for individual, family, and other SES measures. Interaction effects reveal that wealth is more consequential for private school attendance in some local contexts compared to others. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This visual ethnography project illuminates U.S. children'sunderstandings of culture, identity and agency - what they perceive as matters of importance in their lives and learning. I am interested in what the children's visions and voices suggest about their cultural, moral, emotional and civic values and reasoning, and how this knowledge can enhance educational practice and policy. The project takes place in a public elementary school in Worcester, MA., and the school is located in a neighborhood that allows for a rich examination of class, racial, ethnic, geographic and linguistic diversity. In this, the third year of the project, 35 (35) fifth grade boys and girls (ages 10-11) and 22 sixth grader (ages 11-12) have photographed their schools, families and communities and then described the meaning and importance of these images (over 1200 photographs). The focus of my overall analysis is on what the children's images and image-making suggests about the aspects of culture the children take up, how they do it, and why - mapping an ontology of culture, so to speak, from the children's viewpoint. For this paper I focus on one domain of culture - work -- that the children highlighted. I explore the cultural and emotional statements of value about work that were featured by the children and how these statements highlight the shaping force of class. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does having an incarcerated parent adversely affect the outcomes of children? Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), this paper explores how incarceration of a biological father leads to increased probability of criminal behavior and arrest among adult offspring. My analysis suggests that adult children of incarcerated pface are more likely to engage in criminal behavior and face encounters with the criminal justice system. With 2 million individuals serving time in prison or jail in 2000 and the emergence of incarceration as a life-course event among less-educated males and minorities, intergenerational patterns of crime and incarceration may provide new context to the rapidly expanding prison population and the transmission of social disadvantage from parents to children. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine mothers' reasons for homeschooling. Drawing from a four-year ethnographic study of homeschoolers in the Pacific Northwest, I present the ways mothers explained why they rejected conventional schooling for their children. I find that their motivations fell within one single vocabulary of motive: good mothering. Every mother's reasons reflected deep concern for her child, thus her choice was framed, first and foremost, as a parenting decision. I conclude by theoretically discussing how mothers understood their homeschooling choice within the contradictory cultural context of what it means to be a good mother in the contemporary United States. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household wealth is extremely unequally distributed. While facts about the distribution of wealth are readily available, less is known about the family dynamics that underlie this important component of inequality. An increasing number of households are single female households (both never married and divorced), and the number of single mothers among these households has grown in recent decades. This paper explores differences in wealth by marital status, gender, and single parenthood. We focus on young baby boomers, a generation that witnessed unprecedented educational and occupational opportunities for women and that has been entering their peak wealth ownership years in recent decades. We argue that there will be minimal gender differences among never-married people in this cohort. However, we also propose that single mothers and fathers will be economically disadvantaged compared to their peers who do not have children. Our analyses provide support for these arguments. We find the greatest gap in wealth between single mothers and single females with no children. We also find that single mothers accumulate the fewest assets overall. These findings provide insight into the effect of gender and marriage on financial well-being, and they also isolate ways that adult family processes impede saving and asset accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research presented here seeks to broaden our understanding of one very particular aspect of the sociology of childhood: affluent children’s perspectives on class inequality in the contemporary United States. The research examines: 1) these children’s awareness of their own social class position in society, 2) their awareness of the stratification of American society in general, and 3) their explanations for, justifications of, or arguments against, social stratification. Twenty-one children between the ages of five and twelve were interviewed between October and December 2004. This paper reveals some basic patterns of privileged children’s awareness and understanding of class inequality in American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer and video games have become one of the most popular forms of entertainment. Since half of all Americans age six and older play computer and video games and the average age of game player is 29, it is promising to use computer and video games as an entertainment-education form for health intervention. Guided by theories, television and radio based E-E programs for health intervention have been proved to be effective. Considering the fact that traditional media (television and radio) and computer and video games differ in nature in terms of interactivity, we need to be cautious to apply available theories for entertainment education in the domain of gaming. This paper discusses three major lines of theoretical approach for traditional entertainment education and explores the possibility of extend those theories in the domain of interactive media for entertainment education programs for health intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Going beyond the binary paradigm of race--white/non-white--in existing research, a growing number of scholars in the United States have begun to pay attention to the politics of skin color that unfold within the boundaries of minority communities. This paper continues the intellectual trajectory of such scholarship, but takes cultural debates over skin color into the international context of South Asia. Using a qualitative methodological approach that combines feminist and semiotic approaches to media texts, the authors study representations of gender and light skin and dark skin color in the popular illustrated Amar Chitra Katha comic books that are produced in India and marked to Indian children all over the world. The analysis of these children's print media reveals a disturbing hierarchy in the ways in which these comic books represent light- and dark-skinned male and female characters, figures and animals. The illustrations associate men's dark skin with anger, hostility, physical aggression, and failure while women are either symbolically annihilated or represented as demonic, promiscuous, and subordinate. The study points to the value of taking academic discussions of the politics of gender and skin color outside of the Western context to Asian communities that may be perceived as homogenous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On April 1975, over two thousand Vietnamese children were airlifted out of Vietnam and placed into American homes across the country. The news media referred to this project ?Operation Babylift,? and the largely mixed-race children in the airlift as ?rescued.? Many Americans saw footage of President Ford carrying Vietnamese orphans out of airplanes in 1975, but few knew what happened to those children after they settled in with their adopted families. Twenty-five years later, the Vietnamese adoptees began to form a social movement community. This paper tells their story. To do so, it uses interdisciplinary methodology of interviews, participant observation, surveys, and Vietnamese adoptee autobiography to explore two interrelated research questions: First, what is the shape of the Vietnamese adoptee social movement community today? Second, what are the implications of forming it? This study addresses the need for research on adult international adoptees, especially their connections with communities of color. It highlights their agency, collectivity activity, by focusing on how they actively create activism biographies and collective identities. Moreover, this study contributes to the ethnic studies mission by showing how people separated at birth from their families raised in White families can form an ethnic community with activist agendas. Central to the Vietnamese adoptee movement is the creation of what Michael Omi and Hoard Winant conceptualize as racial projects. These racial projects include being is part of an emerging adult adoptee social movement that strives to influence the adoption process. The identities of these community members are not only a product of larger US racial scripts and policies, but also their activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from fieldwork in an after-school program to investigate the meanings low-income children make of money and its impact on their lives. Children understood and wielded the power of money to make social connections and achieve autonomy. Despite an atmosphere of constant teasing, however, children did not tease about poverty. Alternative explanations for the findings are explored, and I conclude by considering the implications of children’s silence around poverty for American discourses of inequality and class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2003, the majority of Americans (52 percent) considered two children to be the ?ideal? family size (Gallup 2003). The percentage stating two children are ideal increased steadily following an all time low (16 percent) in 1962 near the height of the baby boom, and then peaked at 59 percent in 1986 (ibid.). However, during the 1990s, as the percentage stating that two children were ideal decreased, the percentage who gave three children as ideal increased. This paper examines the potential causes of the increase in an effort to better understand characteristics driving fertility variation in a post-demographic transition setting. One possible explanation of this unexpected trend is that children have become the ultimate form of conspicuous consumption. If there has been an increase in the number of three-child families among the wealthy, and if the tastes of the rich influence those of the general population, then the fertility behavior of those with higher incomes may drive overall ideals. To test this hypothesis, I will compare the characteristics of families that actually have three children with those who desire three children. Analyzing ideal family size thus provides opportunities to better understand both fertility as well as taste-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the wave of Chinese adoptions in the United States, narratives of the complexities and emotional turbulence experienced in the process of transracial, international adoptions have appeared in media with increasing frequency. Discourses in the new media about adopted Chinese in American families may reveal an underlying power struggle and what shapes the current culture of Chinese adoption in the United States. The purpose of research for this paper was to explore coverage of Chinese transnational adoptions in selected media - the Washington Post and the New York Times since 1992. It is believed that coverage in the last 15 years may reflect significant social change in attitudes about adoptions and perhaps about the attitude toward Chinese government in the United States. Three patens of discourses regarding adoptive parents- adoptees relationship, adotees' identities and the role played by the Chinese government in the adoption process were found in this research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of parents who share physical custody of their children (also referred to as "joint" custody) has grown steadily over the past three decades. There have been several developments, in particular the passage of state laws in the 1990s favoring shared legal and physical custody in child custody decisions, which suggest that the growth in shared physical custody will continue and will even quicken in pace. Yet, very little known about the specifics of these trends and their implications for family dynamics. This paper addresses three main questions that will be of interest to social scientists studying child custody and children's living arrangements. First, what is the current prevalence of children in the U.S. with "two homes" (i.e., children whose parents have shared physical custody of them)? Second, what is the current status of state laws with respect to decisions about the legal and physical custody of children? And, third, what is life like for modern families in which the parents share physical custody of their children and how useful are our current data sources for understanding family dynamics in these new households? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates language preferences and their change among adolescent children of immigrants in the United States. It focuses on the effect of perceived discrimination, consonant context of assimilation and importance of ethnic identity. Building on findings from previous research, this study includes individual and family characteristics, school influences and ethnolinguistic networks as possible confounding factors. It uses probit analysis with the 1992 and 1995 waves of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey. This study finds that negative discrimination challenges children's attitudes toward their ethnic identity and related language, and makes them more sensitive to their everyday-life experiences. Among children who feel discriminated against, such factors as national origin, language skills and use of non-English language with friends and especially with parents all have stronger effects on language preferences than among children who report no discrimination. Consonant context of assimilation influences language preferences but does not affect their change over time. While greater importance of ethnic identity decreases probability of preferring English among children who report no discrimination, it has no effect on language preferences of children who feel discriminated against. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (or ADHD) is a mental illness that in 2003, affected approximately one out of every 13 children in the United States between the ages of 4 and 17. Measuring childhood behavior with ADHD rating scales is one form of evidence clinicians use to determine whether a child warrants a diagnosis of ADHD. Because of this, knowing more about these scales is critical for understanding how ADHD is socially constructed. In this paper, I analyze nine of these scales asking three questions: Are these rating scales valid measurements? What is the normative childhood behavior that these scales assume? What functions do these scales serve the people who use them? I argue that these scales are not valid according to the basic tenets of statistical logic and that these scales are biased towards finding ADHD in the children the scales target. These scales also assume that children should be compliant to all adult commands, that children should not move their bodies unless it is for a purpose, that they should be productive workers and that they should have a harmonious relationship with peers. I find that these scales function to identify the disruptions that children cause in institutions in order to enable goal-oriented activities to be more easily accomplished in the settings in which they are used. Further directions for research are also suggested. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childhood obesity in the United States has increased in recent years, which has led many to question the role that children’s food advertising plays in this trend. In particular, research has examined the ability of children to understand the techniques that advertisers use to specifically appeal to children in food commercials, and has often concluded that children do not understand or are misled these techniques. The present study is a content analysis of the food ads in one week of children’s programming on both cable and broadcast channels. In sum, 2,334 advertised were analyzed for narrative themes, audio-visual techniques, the presence of rewards for purchasing the product, and product attributes. Notably, the promise of mood change as a result of the product was present in approximately 37% of the ads, 59% used popularity and friendship as part of the plot, 54% mentioned taste, 53% contained humor, 55% feature well-known characters or celebrities, and 57% used a mixed format of live-action scenes and animation. It is suggested that the advertising techniques that advertisers use are those that they believe to be the most effective, based on the amount of documented research that they conduct. It is also suggested that the techniques that children see the most often have the most potential for impact. Therefore, suggestions for future research are made in order to assess the strength and type of this impact based on the appeal methods most frequently utilized. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists and sociologists find consistent evidence, using longitudinal data that controls for selection effects, of a negative association between number of children and wages (child wage penalty) for employed women. This finding has been attributed to several sources including: a decline in mothers' productivity level with each child, employers discriminating against mothers, and women's inclination for selecting "mother-friendly" occupations that often pay lower wages. These explanations focus on mothers and employers but do not address possible local labor market influences on wages. We use a sample consisting of 1,785,715 employed women residing in the 106 largest U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) from the 2000 5-percent Integrated Public Use Microdata Series data. We assess the child wage gap taking into account standard human capital and control variables, and assessing the modifying effects of individual and labor market characteristics. Preliminary results indicate that mean log wages differ by number of children, but not in the expected direction. Women with more job experience and higher education incur higher wages, and the associations are stronger for women with children. The association between number of children and wages is modified by labor market characteristics. Averages wages are higher in labor markets with more immigrants, and the effect is even stronger for women with children. Labor markets with more unionization and more high paying service jobs also have higher wages for all women. Labor markets with more high-end service jobs particularly increase the hourly wages for women with one child. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of what is known about nonresident parenthood and its effects on children comes from studies of children with nonresident fathers. Yet, one in four children with a nonresident parent lives apart from a mother. Based on a sample of 1,503 children with nonresident mothers from the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), this study investigates the following three research questions: (1) what is the effect of involvement (child support and visitation) with nonresident mothers on children's well-being? (2) what is the relationship between the child's household living arrangements (single father, cohabiting partner, stepparent, grandparent/relative, or nonrelative household) and children's well-being, and, (3) does the effect of involvement from the nonresident mother vary by the living arrangements of the child? Preliminary results indicate that regular visitation (at least once a week) with nonresident mothers is related to higher school engagement and less behavior and emotional problems in both younger (6-11) and older (12-17) children. Financial involvement received from nonresident mothers is associated with higher school engagement among older children. Younger and older children with nonresident mothers who live with single fathers, as opposed to other living arrangements, are significantly more engaged in school and have fewer problems. Among both younger and older children, the effect of involvement with the nonresident mother on child outcomes depends on the child's living arrangements. Involvement with nonresident mothers appears to be most beneficial to children who live with single fathers as opposed to other living arrangements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although patterns of social class inequality in the contemporary United States are well documented, our understanding of beliefs about such inequality and the development of these beliefs during childhood are limited. Rarely are children's voices heard regarding their own views on inequality. Even rarer are explorations of privileged children's perspectives on class inequality. Interviews with twenty white children from affluent family backgrounds examine: 1) these children's awareness of their own social class positions in society, 2) their awareness of the stratification of American society in general, and 3) their explanations for, justifications of, or arguments against, social stratification. Patterns of privileged children's awareness and understanding of class inequality in American society are revealed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in two day care centers - the Green Mountain Child Care Center in College Town, Vermont and the Rocky Mountain Christian Day Care in Coalville, Wyoming - the authors demonstrate differences between centers serving different segments of the population. The authors rely on Annette Lareau's (2003) concepts of "concerted cultivation" and the "accomplishment of natural growth" as a way to describe these differences. The authors then reflect on the potential consequences of different styles of child care for the skills, attitudes and orientations developed by young children. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on some of the key travel patterns of children under the age of 18 with reference to the 2001 National Household Travel Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and Federal Highway Administration in the U.S. The driver status of all people residing in the household, the numbers of drivers and vehicles in the household and the characteristics of these vehicles are included. Fewer daily and long distance trips are taken by children under the age of 16. There is a relationship between mode choice for travel and age. The study shows that there are variations between the different age groups' transportation mode.

Focusing on the issue of "external validity" we provide brief outlines of selected large scale longitudinal studies of child populations in Great Britain, Canada and the United States, each situated in its national and historical context. Examination of several such studies shows a considerable amount of variety beneath the label "longitudinal surveys". Canada's National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth appears to be midway between British and US models of longitudinal surveys of young children and, while as yet little known to US sociologists, appears to have greater external validity and ought to be superior for making policy-relevant estimates about child and adolescent populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis uses a pooled sample from the 2000 and 2002 June Current Population Survey to conduct a logistic regression predicting the labor force participation of women. Two models are run in SPSS using variables to capture differences in race/ethnicity/nativity, human capital, family status, and region. The second model includes interaction terms (having a child under 5 times each race/ethnic/nativity category). Interaction effects suggest that the effect of having a young child on the LFP of women is significantly decreased for foreign born Whites and foreign born women of Mexican origin, but significantly increased for native born African Americans. Results for foreign born African Americans and native born Mexican origin women are not statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade has witnessed an outpouring of interest in children's emotional and behavioral problems from media outlets, the medical profession, and allied mental health disciplines. Little scholarly attention has been given to how the diverse claims of these stakeholders are used by adults to construct a lay understanding of children's mental health problems. Drawing on social constructionist and claims-making traditions, we analyze the competing frameworks that emerge in public discourse on children's emotional and behavioral problems. Specifically, using vignette-based data from the 2002 General Social Survey's National Stigma Study - Children Module, we conduct a latent class analysis of causal attributions for three types of childhood problems: daily trouble, ADHD, and depression. We then evaluate the predictors of those attributions, including characteristics of the child, whether respondents label the problem a mental illness, and respondents' socio-demographic characteristics. We find that adults construct children's mental health problems in a manner consistent with public frameworks. And, while socio-demographic characteristics do little to predict group differences, several interesting patterns emerge with regard to the characteristics of the child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study which demonstrated how newspapers remain the primary locations for moral storytelling in society by examining the press coverage of child murders in the U.S. and Great Britain between 1930 and 2000. The study draws on concepts from both narrative and framing analysis in order to examine the thematic characteristics of the coverage. The coverage from both countries included personal, institutional and societal narratives.

The article investigates the use of mediation strategies in modifying the effects of television advertising among children in different age groups in the U.S. Structural equation modeling analysis confirmed that factual mediation reduced advertising persuasion by stimulating children's cognitive responses. While evaluative mediation reduced advertising persuasion by influencing children's affective responses to advertising.

Background. Recent research findings have brought attention to the hardship faced by children of immigrants in the United States. Given the critical impact of parental characteristics, a variety circumstances facing immigrants, including their lack of English proficiency, unfamiliarity with the social service system, and cultural differences are likely to pose risks for their children. Objective of the Study. In this study we focus on one aspect that may place children of immigrants at an even greater risk, having unmarried parents, because research shows that children in single-parent families face multiple disadvantages. Methodology. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine social and economic conditions of children of immigrants in married and unmarried families in comparison to children in native-born families. Findings. The data show that children of immigrants in unmarried families face a double jeopardy because immigrant mothers who are unmarried consistently fare worse than those who are married. In addition, the disadvantage is much greater than among children of native families even when taking marital status into account. They do worse in terms of socioeconomic characteristics, living arrangements, access to assets, health, material hardship and social support, and access to health care and public assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adult children of Latino immigrants often pursue their educational goals at a community college. While the relative successes of community colleges are commendable, the interaction of the tasks they perform can have unintended consequences. Community colleges accommodate a diverse and precariously situated population with varying needs and constraints. Part of this challenge includes the orchestration of a student-centered approach , including a self-empowering discourse that acknowledges the historical experiences of the student population, and, in effect, creates a sense of community and belonging that encourages students to remain enrolled. At the same time, the reality that most students do not graduate or go on to four-year universities. The community college milieu weighs on important questions about the immigrant second generation, which are usually posed in the following dichotomy: Will they become more socially and economically integrated into the U.S. mainstream? Or will they suffer the burden of discrimination and an economy that no longer easily incorporates them, and thus become part of an oppositionally focused underclass? In fact, I will argue that neither extreme is accurate. Drawing on 15 months of ethnography and quantitative data from the Second Generation in Metropolitan New York Survey, I argue that the community college experience leads to yet another niche of segmented assimilation. It is a place where children of immigrants experience some degree of limited mobility, albeit limited compared to what they had hoped for. Moreover, as an institution grounded in minority politics, the college provides a means for them to make some sense of their predicaments through the discourse of Latino pan-ethnicity. In other words, they are made Latino. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study challenges the conventional wisdom that elderly, child and overall poverty are divergent. Comparing the official U.S. measure with the Luxembourg Income Study?s (LIS) measure, I show that the official measure underestimates elderly poverty by a significant amount and child poverty by a lesser amount. The elderly were considerably more likely to be poor than children in the 1970s, children were more likely to be poor 1984-1997, but the elderly were more likely to be poor in 2000. Both the elderly and children are much more likely to be poor than the overall population. Analyses of 18 rich Western democracies show that overall and child poverty are very strongly positively correlated, while elderly poverty is moderately correlated with those two. Multivariate analyses show some commonalities and some differences in the sources of these three. Two measures of the welfare state significantly reduce overall, elderly and child poverty. While female labor force participation reduces all three, manufacturing employment, economic performance and demographic variables only influence one or two of the dependent variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By now, the growth in obesity among American children over the last several decades and the potential health risks associated with childhood obesity have become well documented. Although some critics have implicated schools as contributing to this health problem, it is unclear whether these attributions are appropriately directed. We address this issue by estimating children?s growth in BMI (Body Mass Index) when school is in session (during the academic year) versus when it is not (during the summer), using a national sample of children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. We find that, during the summer, children?s monthly BMI gain is three times as large, and nine times as variable, as during the school year. This suggests that not just average BMI, but also the gaps between normal and overweight children, grow fastest when school is not in session. Although most BMI differences are not associated with race or class, we do find that the black-white BMI gap grows more slowly when school is in session than when it is not. We conclude that when it comes to the problem of childhood obesity, the most important problems, and the most important interventions, must have their effects when school is not in session. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike the prospects faced by the early European immigrants and their children in the early decades of the twentieth century, what confronts today?s immigrants and their descendants is a labor market of a shrinking stratum of middle-class jobs, and of the expansion of low-skilled service jobs, and ethnic economy, and of a decline in traditional unionized manufacturing jobs. How well do these immigrants and their offspring make ends-meet and even realize their ?American dream? in this restructured economy of the American society? I use data from Los Angeles Study of Urban Inequality (LASUI) and analysis of multinomial logistic regression to explore two related questions: How do first-generation immigrants differ from second-generation immigrants by their participation patterning in various labor market segments (including primary, secondary segment, and ethnic enclave)? What factors influence the different patterning of market segment participation for first-generation immigrants versus their second-generation counterparts? The result shows a segmented assimilation pattern of labor market experiences among immigrants and children of immigrants. Both nativity and ethnicity play important roles in determining various patterns of labor market participation. For first-generation immigrants, ethnic enclave is the place where they are more likely than their second-generation counterparts to concentrate, and English proficiency increases immigrants? odds to work in mainstream primary segment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]