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Using Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Data (N = 4,871), this paper examines why relationship status matters for prenatal health behaviors. The paper argues that a mother’s potential investments in her child’s health are conditioned by socioeconomic and interpersonal resources, including the quality of her relationship with the child’s father. Mothers in strained relationships may experience more stress, which is associated with poor prenatal health behaviors. Results show that married mothers exhibit the healthiest prenatal behaviors and that relationship characteristics and dynamics measures, including physical abuse and relationship conflict, predict poor prenatal health behaviors above and beyond confounding factors. In addition, these relationship characteristics explain some of the advantage in prenatal health behaviors married mothers have over unmarried mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper's thesis is that many adolescent problems, particularly those involving sex, can be strikingly reduced or eliminated by intelligent, rationally planned parental management beginning at birth. Among the principal features of desirable parental management, the paper stresses effective parent-child communication. Of approximately 1,500 couples who received routine medical and psychological preparation for marriage over a period of 35 years, approximately 500 remained under continuing counsel and observation after their children came for premarital service. Thus conclusions could be drawn as to how effective she parents had been in preparing their children for adolescence and for marriage, and what type of parental management reduces problems of adolescence and increases capability for successful marriage. Young people' demand for earlier marriage is seen as acceptable when they have matured under improved standards of democratic process and sex education in the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marriage Council of Philadelphia, a community service agency which offers leadership of sex education courses requested by schools, colleges, and lay and religious groups, uses a ‘counselor-educator’ approach and process rather than the traditional educator's emphasis on information-giving. Staff members try to help teenagers not only to increase sex knowledge but to enlarge their understanding of emotional interactions and to develop the verbal and nonverbal skills needed for interpersonal competence. This paper emphasizes the leader's approach to the concept that sex experience is related to the full range of self-expressiveness and communication, and hopefully to the full valuing of another human being in sex and in all of life's personal relationships. Contacts with parents, schools, and community groups are also described as part of the leader's responsibility in educating teen-agers about sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applied the family stress model to the case of Turkey in the wake of the 2001 economic crisis. Using structural equation modeling and a nationally representative urban sample of 711 married women and 490 married men, we tested whether economic hardship and the associated family economic strain on families resulted in greater marital problems. Our results showed a modified family stress model applies to Turkey. In contrast to most previous research, economic strain had a direct effect on marital problems, and the indirect effect of strain, via emotional distress, was only significant for women. The results were interpreted in light of social and cultural factors that condition how economic distress affects marital relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports analyses from a 7-year followup investigation of women pregnant as teenagers who had been studied during their pregnancy and shortly following their child's birth. The objective of these analyses was to identify potentially modifiable factors that might influence or condition psychological adaptation within this high-risk population. Consistent with prior research, differences in social support and in personal resources or attributes effectively predicted depressive symptomatology, suggesting that such differences constitute crucial mental health contingencies and thereby represent promising intervention targets. Contrary to prior research, differences in stress exposure were found to be of substantial explanatory significance, with lifetime accumulation of major, potentially traumatic events representing the most significant element. These findings suggest the need to develop a greater understanding of socially or programatically modifiable determinants of stress exposure and to take seriously the prospect of developing interventions that reduce such exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to study the domestic work of various children in Nebraska. Using data from a random sample of 790 Nebraska parents, this paper reports on extent of children's involvement in the household division of labor and the meaning of this work for the family. A major research tradition in psychology has been the development of moral character in the child, i.e., the development of responsibility, self-control and service. They measured the extent of home duties by a simple checklist of chores that the children had ever done and responsibility by a teacher rating and a student questionnaire on citizenship values.

Whom do parents see as the social agent(s) to be entrusted with the sex education of children? This paper investigates the question of the so-called take-over of a family function by another social institution. Data obtained from a random sample of mothers who had experienced a live-birth or stillbirth in the last five years suggest that most parents feel they should teach children about reproductive physiology, but that they also want the schools to help. Preference does not appear to be contingent on the extent of the mother's knowledge of reproductive physiology, on her fertility experience, or on the source of her sex information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmarried mothers are frequently unreached in our society. Even when they come to maternity homes, the babies are often the foci of agency concern, and the mothers leave with their basic problems untouched. This paper describes the attempt of an agency, the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County, Florida, to reach out to a group of girls in a maternity home and to another quite dissimilar group of dropouts from school because of pregnancy. Group counseling is a process which can help many of these persons, some of whom can gain thereby the necessary strength and support to tolerate individual counseling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the rationale for and initial findings concerning the development of the Marital Comparison Level Index. The necessity for the development of a new method for assessing the perception of marital relationships is predicated on the multitude of criticisms aimed specifically at the dependent measures used in the marital adjustment-satisfaction research. The MCLI is based upon the interpersonal processes highlighted by social exchange perspectives on the evaluations of relationships, with particular focus on comparative processes. Consequently, the MCLI provides a measure of the degree to which respondents feel that the outcomes derived from their relationships compare with their expectations for relationships and, hence, their complaints about the relationship. Data collected on 301 married individuals suggest that the relational dimensions incorporated into the MCLI are perceived as important by married individuals and that the scale is both unidimensional and highly reliable. Evidence for the validity of the scale is also presented, since respondents who more positively evaluated their relationships on the MCLI were more likely to express a strong commitment to their relationships and view them as more equitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the implications of an emerging field such as Family Studies adopting the conceptualizations and methods originating in other disciplines, for often markedly different purposes. While acknowledging the debts we owe to sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology and biology for important theories and methods which have opened new doors for family research, the author argues that our field faces a serious deficit in the instrumentation necessary to bring innovative theoretical methodology and sophisticated analytic techniques into a clear and usable scientific focus. The author takes a hard and critical look at the consequences of this for advancement in our field. In addition, a working model for "doing" family science is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between interpersonal communication and marital satisfaction. Two hypotheses have been advanced that address this relationship. A particular form of the communication skill deficit hypothesis will be addressed in the present investigation, namely the form of the hypothesis that focuses on nonverbal behavior. To test the communication deficit hypothesis for nonverbal components of a message, a procedure must be employed that both specifies the sender's intent and controls the verbal components.

The article presents a study which identifies factors associated with singlehood in males and females. The authors argue that a lot of research has been conducted into the psychological sequelae that lead to singlehood, however factors from childhood can also account for this status. The findings support the hypothesis that higher levels of intelligence, education, and career status account for singlehood in females. Males, it was found, are more likely to remain single if they possess poor interpersonal relationships with parents or siblings.

Several theoretical ideas in role theory are integrated with the empirical literature that has investigated such role transitions as adjusting to the coming of the first child, retirement, bereavement, etc. This analysis is an attempt to build theory by identifying and reworking propositions that are sufficiently general and precisely stated that they can be used as a basis for deductively explaining why variation occurs in the ease of making various role transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study concerning how the high school teachers in Florida gives advise to their students. The study attempts to estimate the amount of counseling done per year by vocational homemaking teachers to their students concerning dating relationships, premarital and marital relationships, intrafamilial relationships, personal growth and psychosexual development. It aims to determine the relationship between counseling done on the concerns mentioned and selected factors associated with the teachers, including recency of formal education, counseling education of training, amount of time available for counseling, among others. It is also mentioned in the paper that the study does not evaluate the effectiveness of their counseling.

Studies show that fathers report work–family conflict levels comparable to mothers. The authors examine gender differences in work‐related strategies used to ease such conflicts. The authors also test whether the presence of young children at home shapes parents' use of different strategies. They address these focal questions using panel data from the Canadian Work, Stress, and Health study (N = 306 fathers, 474 mothers). The authors find that mothers with young children are more likely to scale back on work demands when compared with fathers with young children, but mothers and fathers with older children are equally likely to pursue these strategies. Furthermore, women with young children and men with older children are more likely to seek increased schedule control as a result of work–family conflict when compared with their parent counterparts. The authors situate these findings in the vast literature on the consequences of work–family conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between premarital childbearing and the timing of women's entry into their first marriage in sub‐Saharan Africa. The study shows that African women who have a premarital birth generally experience later transitions to marriage than do their childless peers. Although the birth of a child precipitates a quicker transition to marriage initially, unmarried mothers, on average, marry at older ages than their childless peers and remain single for between 2 and 14 years. Evidence from a subsample of countries confirms that the time between having a child and first marriage has lengthened slightly in some countries; however, this reflects mainly the overall trend toward later marriage, rather than a further bifurcation of the marital trajectories of mothers versus childless women. The study raises policy concerns about the welfare of Africa's single mothers and their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Prior studies have found that marriage benefits well‐being, but cohabitation may provide similar benefits. An analysis of the British Cohort Study 1970, a prospective survey following respondents to age 42, examines whether partnerships in general, and marriage in particular, influence mental well‐being in midlife. Propensity score matching indicates whether childhood characteristics are a sufficient source of selection to eliminate differences in well‐being between those living with and without a partner and those cohabitating and married. The results indicate that matching on childhood characteristics does not eliminate advantages to living with a partner; however, matching eliminates differences between marriage and cohabitation for men and women more likely to marry. On the other hand, marriage may provide benefits to women less likely to marry unless they have shared children and are in long‐lasting partnerships. Hence, childhood selection attenuates differences between cohabitation and marriage, except for women less likely to marry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enhancing communication as a means of promoting relationship quality has been increasingly questioned, particularly for couples at elevated sociodemographic risk. In response, the current study investigated communication change as a mechanism accounting for changes in relationship satisfaction and confidence among 344 rural, predominantly low-income African American couples with an early adolescent child who participated in a randomized controlled trial of the Protecting Strong African American Families ( ProSAAF) program. Approximately 9 months after baseline assessment, intent-to-treat analyses indicated that ProSAAF couples demonstrated improved communication, satisfaction, and confidence when compared with couples in the control condition. Improvements in communication mediated ProSAAF effects on relationship satisfaction and confidence; conversely, neither satisfaction nor confidence mediated intervention effects on changes in communication. These results underscore the short-term efficacy of a communication-focused, culturally sensitive prevention program and suggest that communication is a possible mechanism of change in relationship quality among low-income African American couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using Norwegian survey data on partnered individuals ages 18 to 55 ( N = 4,061; 31% cohabitors), the current study investigated differences across marital and cohabiting unions regarding the patterns of contact with the parents of the partner. In addition to investigating the frequency of such contact, we assessed the nature of and perceived quality of contacts with the partner's parents. The authors grouped respondents according to whether they had children with their partner and controlled for a range of selection characteristics. Results confirmed that parents with preschool children met their in-laws more frequently than the childless, irrespective of union type. Married respondents as well as cohabitors with preschool children reported better relations with their partner's parents than childless cohabitors. Taken together, the results imply that having small children was more decisive for the relationship with the parents of the partner than getting married, particularly with regard to contact frequency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We seek to identify heterogeneous trajectories of marital conflict during the early childhood period, identify predictors associated with these trajectories, and examine associations between trajectory group membership and children's disruptive behavior. Participants were 469 families examined 4 times when the children were 2 to 54 months of age. Maternal reports of marital conflict, adverse childhood experiences, depressive symptoms, and sociodemographic characteristics were collected, and averaged maternal and paternal reports of child disruptive problems were used. Using growth mixture modeling, 3 trajectories of marital conflict were identified: high increasing (21.8%), high decreasing (7%), and low stable (71.2%). Maternal adverse childhood experiences predicted increased risk of belonging in the high-increasing group, whereas depressive symptoms predicted increased risk of belonging in the high-decreasing group. Importantly, children of mothers in the high-increasing group exhibited higher levels of disruptive behavior at 54 months when compared with children of mothers in the high-decreasing and low-stable groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation examined whether the life satisfaction advantage of married over unmarried people decreased over the past 3 decades and whether the changes in contextual gender specialization explained this trend. Contextual gender specialization was defined as a country-year-specific share of married women who fully specialize in household work. The author used representative data from the World Values Survey-European Values Study integrated data set for 87 countries ( N = 292,525) covering a period of 29 years (1981-2009). The results showed that the life satisfaction advantage of being married decreased over time among men but not among women. Furthermore, the decline of contextual gender specialization correlated with this trend in developed but not in developing countries. In developed countries the life satisfaction of unmarried people increased as the contextual gender specialization declined, whereas the life satisfaction of married people was not affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents with children from both past and current unions create complex stepfamilies. The author investigated the association of past-union children with intentions for a second or third child in the current union of 1,739 couples in the United Kingdom Millennium Cohort Study. Both partners' reports of their own resident and nonresident past-union children as well as fathers' reports of involvement with nonresident past-union children create a comprehensive measurement of past-union children. The analysis revealed that coresident past-union children were more closely associated with childbearing intentions than were nonresident past-union children and that weekly contact with nonresident children had a stronger link to intentions than did payments. These results suggest that the value of the past-union children as siblings and the time commitment made to these children are particularly salient to parents' decisions about further childbearing in their current union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young South African fathers are often engaged in their children's lives even if they do not live together. Using longitudinal data on children ( n = 1,209) from the Cape Town area, the authors show that although only 26% of young fathers live with their children, 66% of nonresidential fathers maintain regular contact, and 61% provide financial support. The father-child relationship, however, is embedded in broader family ties. The type of father-mother relationship is strongly associated with whether fathers coreside with their children but not with fathers' contact with nonresidential children. Close mother and maternal grandmother bonds reduce the likelihood that fathers live with their children, whereas close ties between fathers and paternal grandmothers increase the chance that fathers visit nonresidential children. Family ties do not affect fathers' financial contributions, which are driven by men's current economic situation. These findings illustrate that father-child relationships are best understood in the context of interacting family systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is currently little knowledge about what gay men and lesbians seek in a romantic relationship. This study extends the literature on gay men and lesbians' partnership preferences by engaging in the first large-scale empirical study of the long-term dating intentions and monogamy beliefs of gay and lesbian online daters across 53 regions in 8 European countries ( N = 24,598). Looking at profile and preference information, the authors examined both individual and contextual determinants in a series of multilevel logistic regression analyses. They show that lesbians give more importance to monogamy but show less interest in starting a long-term relationship. The data also reveal the importance of life course aspects such as relationship history and presence of children. Finally, the authors empirically demonstrate that social tolerance and legal recognition of same-sex unions are associated with higher long-term dating intentions and stronger monogamy beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-national comparisons constitute a valuable strategy to assess how broader cultural, political, and institutional contexts shape family outcomes. One typical approach of cross-national family research is to use comparable data from a limited number of countries, fit similar regression models for each country, and compare results across country-specific models. Researchers increasingly are adopting a second approach, which requires merging data from many more societies and testing multilevel models using the pooled sample. Although the second approach has the advantage of allowing direct estimates of the effects of nation-level characteristics, it is more likely to suffer from the problems of omitted-variable bias, influential cases, and measurement and construct nonequivalence. The author discusses ways to improve the first approach's ability to infer macro-level influences as well as how to deal with challenges associated with the second one. She also suggests choosing analytical strategies according to whether the data meet multilevel models' assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on same-sex relationships has informed policy debates and legal decisions that greatly affect American families, yet the data and methods available to scholars studying same-sex relationships have been limited. In this article the authors review current approaches to studying same-sex relationships and significant challenges for this research. After exploring how researchers have dealt with these challenges in prior studies, the authors discuss promising strategies and methods to advance future research on same-sex relationships, with particular attention given to gendered contexts and dyadic research designs, quasi-experimental designs, and a relationship biography approach. Innovation and advances in the study of same-sex relationships will further theoretical and empirical knowledge in family studies more broadly and increase understanding of different-sex as well as same-sex relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides family scientists with an understanding of contemporary measurement perspectives and the ways in which item response theory (IRT) can be used to develop measures with desired evidence of precision and validity for research uses. The article offers a nontechnical introduction to some key features of IRT, including its orientation toward locating items along an underlying dimension and toward estimating precision of measurement for persons with different levels of that same construct. It also offers a didactic example of how the approach can be used to refine conceptualization and operationalization of constructs in the family sciences, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 ( n = 2,732). Three basic models are considered: (a) the Rasch and (b) two-parameter logistic models for dichotomous items and (c) the Rating Scale Model for multicategory items. Throughout, the author highlights the potential for researchers to elevate measurement to a level on par with theorizing and testing about relationships among constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although children's family lives are diverse, the measurement of children's living arrangements has lagged, focusing on the relationships of children to parents while largely ignoring sibling composition. Using data from the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation ( N = 23,985) the authors documented patterns of family complexity among a nationally representative sample of children ages 0-17 living in a range of family structures. They also examined the independent and joint associations of family structure and family complexity on child economic well-being. Family complexity was independently related to economic disadvantage, namely, a lower income-to-needs ratio and a higher likelihood of public assistance receipt. The role of family complexity was partially contingent on family structure, with the positive association between family complexity and receipt of public assistance more pronounced for children in families with 2 married biological parents. This study demonstrates the utility of integrating family structure and family complexity in studies of children's well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Families are not frozen dioramas; they are alive, active, and changing. Models of real-life marital and family processes require many moving pieces. An intensive repeated measures approach reaches beyond static representations of the family toward more dynamic models that depict 'life as it is lived.' The appearance of studies that use diaries and biological sampling in everyday life has burgeoned in the family research literature. These methods are part of a larger class of naturalistic methods that assess families in action and that includes direct video and audio recordings of families in their everyday environments. This article summarizes research that uses diaries, observations, and biological data collected over time in natural settings to study families. It provides an overview of the major research questions, designs, methods of data collection, and statistical models used in those literatures. Theoretical contributions and next steps in naturalistic research on families are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Families across the income spectrum experienced subjective feelings of economic strain during the Great Recession. Existing evidence suggests that much of that economic strain did not arise from individual-specific economic shocks, such as unemployment or income loss, as much as it did from worry and uncertainty about the future. The authors tested a model in which a measure of subjective perceptions of economic strain was the key predictor of children's behavior problems and objective indicators of economic experiences were treated as control variables. To do so, they used new data from a population-based sample of children ages 4-17 ( N = 303) living in southeast Michigan during the period 2009-2012. They found that economic strain exhibited a qualitatively large independent association with internalizing behavior problems for White-but not Black-children. This association was statistically significant over and above objective indicators of economic experiences and the family psychosocial context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses marital dynamics, with a focus on how marital quality affects subjective well-being in later life. Topics include a comparison of husbands' and wives' reports of their marital satisfaction, a comparison of marital and life satisfaction by gender, and the implications for either spouse's marital appraisals.

The author examined the influence of marital discord on separation and divorce in a rural South Asian setting. Little is known about how marital discord influences marital outcomes in settings with low personal freedom and limited access to independence. Using a sample of 674 couples from the Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal, the author investigated the impact of marital discord on the rate of marital dissolution and the extent to which wives' and husbands' perceptions of discord influence dissolution. The results revealed that (a) spouses' perceptions of marital discord increase the rate of marital dissolution, (b) both husbands' and wives' perceptions of discord have an important influence, and (c) the influence of wives' perceptions of discord is independent of their husbands' perceptions. Overall, these findings suggest that both spouses' perceptions of discord are important for marital outcomes, even in settings where the costs of marital dissolution are relatively high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors used child fixed effects models to estimate the effects of parental divorce and death on a variety of outcomes using 2 large national data sets: (a) the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort (kindergarten through the 5th grade) and (b) the National Educational Longitudinal Study (8th grade to the senior year of high school). In both data sets, divorce and death were associated with multiple negative outcomes among children. Although evidence for a causal effect of divorce on children was reasonably strong, effect sizes were small in magnitude. A second analysis revealed a substantial degree of variability in children's outcomes following parental divorce, with some children declining, others improving, and most not changing at all. The estimated effects of divorce appeared to be strongest among children with the highest propensity to experience parental divorce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examined whether the provision of child care helps older adults maintain better cognitive functioning. Descriptive evidence from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe ( n = 5,610 women and n = 4,760 men, ages 50-80) shows that intensively engaged grandparents have lower cognitive scores than the others. The authors show that this result is attributable to background characteristics and not to child care per se. Using an instrumental variable approach, they found that providing child care has a positive effect on 1 of the 4 cognitive tests considered: verbal fluency. For the other cognitive tests, no statistically significant effect was found. Given the same level of engagement, they found very similar results for grandmothers and grandfathers. These findings point to the inclusion of grandparenting among other cognitively stimulating social activities and the need to consider such benefits when discussing the implications of this important type of nonmonetary intergenerational transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on the association between parenthood and life satisfaction has shown that parents of minor children are not more satisfied with their lives than childless people. This study addressed the question of why children do not enhance their parents' life satisfaction. A major objective of this study was to determine whether and to what extent the costs of raising children act as suppressors of life satisfaction. The empirical analysis applied fixed-effects models and used data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1994-2010, N = 16,021). The 3 primary findings of this study were that (a) parenthood by itself has substantial and enduring positive effects on life satisfaction; (b) these positive effects are offset by financial and time costs of parenthood; and (c) the impact of these costs varies considerably with family factors, such as the age and number of children, marital status, and the parents' employment arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Young Adult file were used to explore the relationship between the number of family structure transitions experienced from birth to age 18 and weight status in young adulthood. This was done by testing both linear risk and threshold effect models by gender (N = 3,447). The findings suggest that a linear risk approach best describes the relationship between family instability during childhood and weight status in young adulthood. Specifically, the cumulative family structure transitions children experienced from birth to age 18 place females, but not males, at greater risk for being overweight/obese in young adulthood. Sensitivity analyses indicated that cumulative family structure instability-and not formations or dissolutions separately-drove the main results. Birth order did not affect the findings. Increasing children's support systems during times of instability may reduce female children's risk of being overweight/obese as young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the present meta-analysis was to empirically test the widely held assumption that women experience lower marital satisfaction than men. A total of 226 independent samples with a combined sum of 101,110 participants were included in the meta-analysis. Overall results indicated statistically significant yet very small gender differences in marital satisfaction between wives and husbands, with wives slightly less satisfied than husbands; moderator analyses, however, indicated that this difference was due to the inclusion of clinical samples, with wives in marital therapy 51% less likely to be satisfied with their marital relationship than their husbands. The effect size for nonclinical community-based samples indicated no significant gender differences among couples in the general population. Additional moderator analyses indicated that there were also no gender differences when the levels of marital satisfaction of husbands and wives in the same relationship (i.e., dyadic data) were compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated associations of low-income working mothers' daily perceived workload and their reports of their own mood and their interactions with their young children. Sixty-one mothers were asked to report on their workload, mood, and interactions with their preschool-age children every day for 2 weeks (N = 520 work days). Low-income mothers reported significant day-to-day variability in workload. The results revealed a curvilinear pattern of negative work-to-family spillover: Both lower-than-average and higher-than-average workload days were associated with increased negative and tired mood, decreased positive mood, and increased harsh mother-child interactions. Although both younger and older mothers experienced a curvilinear pattern of spillover to daily mood, younger mothers in the period of emerging adulthood also experienced spillover to mother-child interactions, perhaps because they are still learning how to balance work and family demands. Both high and low workload are salient stressors in the daily lives of low-wage working mothers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High rates of incarceration in the United States have motivated a broad examination of the effects of parental incarceration on child well-being. Although a growing literature documents challenges facing the children of incarcerated men, most incarcerated fathers lived apart from their children before their arrest, raising questions of whether they were sufficiently involved with their families for their incarceration to affect their children. The author used the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,071) to examine father-child contact among incarcerated fathers and found that most incarcerated fathers maintained a degree of contact with their children through either coresidence or visitation. Moreover, the results revealed robust reductions in both father-child coresidence and visitation when fathers are incarcerated-between 18% and 20% for coresidence and 30% to 50% for the probability of visitation. The findings suggest that these reductions are driven by both incapacitation while incarcerated and union dissolution upon release. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of parental favoritism in childhood and adulthood has been well documented; little is known, however, about changes over time in such within-family differentiation. Drawing on theories of life course processes and developmental psychology, the authors used 7-year panel data collected from 406 older mothers about their relationships with 1,514 adult children to explore patterns of favoritism regarding caregiving and emotional closeness. The findings demonstrated continuity in patterns of mothers' favoritism. Mothers tended to prefer the same children across time, particularly regarding preferred caregivers. It was anticipated that children's social-structural characteristics, similarity to their mothers, structural position in the family, and support provision to mothers would predict favored child status across time; however, only similarity and support processes were strong and consistent predictors of change and continuity in patterns of mothers' favoritism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides evidence that newlywed pairs who have a shared and well-grounded understanding of their courtship are better able to establish unions that endure. Using a sample of 168 couples, the authors found that marriages were more likely to survive when courting partners (a) loved each other to a similar degree, (b) depicted the probability of marriage and changes in the likelihood of marriage in a corresponding fashion over the course of their courtship, and (c) portrayed the courtship as escalating from a low (25%) to a high (75%) probability of marriage as spanning a comparable period of time. The durability of marriages was reflected, as well, in how solidly courting partners' feelings for each other were interwoven with their courtship experiences. More specifically, courtship difficulties were not as associated with weakened feelings of love or with heightened feelings of ambivalence among couples who later divorced as compared to those who stayed married. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas in theory individuals tend to postpone fertility decisions in times of economic uncertainty, empirical evidence on that question is scarce. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel ( N = 4,548), the authors estimated the effect of economic concerns on the probability of becoming pregnant in the next year. They exploited exogenous variation in economic concerns induced by the announcement of a major German unemployment benefit reform as an instrumental variable and found that strong economic concerns were significantly related to lower fertility of women between ages 26 and 44 years cohabiting with a male partner. Jointly estimating the impact of male and female concerns in a model that allows for endogeneity of perceived economic uncertainty revealed that it was strong economic concerns perceived by the women that reduced fertility. The effect was driven by male main breadwinner couples, by couples with a medium household income, and by couples who already had children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of divorce are pronounced for parents of young children, and cohabitation dissolution is increasing in this population and has important implications. The mental health consequences of union dissolution were examined, by union type and parental gender, using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (n= 1,998 for mothers and 1,764 for fathers). Overall, cohabitation and marital dissolution were both associated with increased maternal and paternal depressive symptoms, though for married mothers, depressive symptoms returned to predissolution levels with time. Difference-in-difference estimates indicated no differences in the magnitude of the increase in depressive symptoms by type of dissolution, though pooled difference models suggested that married fathers increased in depressive symptoms more than cohabiting fathers. Potential time-variant mediators did not account for these associations, though greater family chaos was associated with increased maternal depressive symptoms, and decreased social support and father-child contact were associated with increased paternal depressive symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the association between typical parental work hours (including nonemployed parents) and children's behavior in two-parent heterosexual families. Child behavior was measured by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) at ages 5, 8, and 10 in the Western Australian Pregnancy Cohort (Raine) Study (N = 4,201 child-year observations). Compared to those whose fathers worked fewer hours per week, children whose fathers worked 55 hours or more per week had significantly higher levels of externalizing behavior. This association was not explained by father-child time during the week, poorer family functioning, or overreactive parenting practice. Further, when stratifying the analysis by child gender, this association appeared to exist only in boys. Mothers' work hours were unrelated to children's behavioral problems. The role of parent and child gender in the relationships between parental work hours and children's behavioral problems, together with mediating factors, warrants further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigated how the reported happiness of married and cohabiting individuals varies cross-nationally with societal gender beliefs and religious context. They used the 2002 International Social Survey Programme data from 27 countries (N = 36,889) and specified hierarchical linear models with macro - micro level interactions in order to examine how the social - institutional context affects happiness at the individual level. Consistent with previous research, they found a happiness gap between married and cohabiting persons. In the case of women, this gap was moderated by the gender climate and the religious context in the country. This suggests that, at least for women, this gap is not intractable but is rather an outcome of the social context. For men, the relationship between marital status and happiness was less variable across the different social contexts studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, a record number of foreign-born individuals were detained and removed from the United States. This article looks at the impact enforcement policies have had on Mexican families more broadly and children specifically. Drawing on interviews with 91 parents and 110 children in 80 households, the author suggests that, similar to the injury pyramid used by public health professionals, a deportation pyramid best depicts the burden of deportation on children. At the top of the pyramid are instances that have had the most severe consequences on children's daily lives: families in which a deportation has led to permanent family dissolution. But enforcement policies have had the greatest impact on children at the bottom of the pyramid. Regardless of legal status or their family members' involvement with immigration authorities, children in Mexican immigrant households describe fear about their family stability and confusion over the impact legality has on their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescents who share meals with their parents score better on a range of well-being indicators. Using 3 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (N = 17,977), the authors assessed the causal nature of these associations and the extent to which they persist into adulthood. They examined links between family dinners and adolescent mental health, substance use, and delinquency at Wave 1, accounting for detailed measures of the family environment to test whether family meals simply proxy for other family processes. As a more stringent test of causality, they estimated fixed-effects models from Waves 1 and 2, and they used Wave 3 to explore persistence in the influence of family dinners. Associations between family dinners and adolescent well-being remained significant, net of controls, and some held up to stricter tests of causality. Beyond indirect benefits via earlier well-being, however, family dinners associations did not persist into adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors evaluated the extent to which the short-term effect of late life widowhood on parent-child relationships is moderated by 5 personality traits-Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness to Experience-and how these interactive effects differ by gender. Data were from the Changing Lives of Older Couples Study (N = 1,532). The results indicated that the effects of widowhood on positive and negative interactions with children were significantly moderated by Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience. An agreeable personality helped widowed persons receive more positive interactions, whereas Openness to Experience reduced negative interactions. Widowed persons with higher Extraversion reported more negative interactions. Furthermore, moderating effects of Extraversion and Openness to Experience differed by gender; specifically, higher Extraversion scores predicted increased positive interactions with children for widowed women but decreased positive interactions for widowed men. The significant association between Openness to Experience and decreased negative interactions with children was more apparent among men than among women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary goal of this study was to examine the longitudinal reciprocal relationships between connectedness to parents and autonomy among Korean adolescents using five annual waves of the Korea Youth Panel Survey. The sample consisted of 3,449 adolescents, whose mean age was 13.79 years at Wave 1. Contrary to the mainstream findings in individualistic societies that autonomy is not necessarily inimical to connectedness to parents, the present study convincingly suggested that Korean adolescents’ pursuit of autonomy might conflict with the maintenance of connectedness with their parents. Similarly, unlike most studies conducted in Western countries, Korean adolescents’ maintenance of connectedness with their parents was likely to undermine the attainment of autonomy. Results are discussed in terms of collectivistic cultural values emphasizing the developmental pathway of interdependence instead of the development of autonomy within the cultural context of Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated associations of low-income working mothers' daily interactions with supervisors and their interactions with children. Sixty-one mothers of preschool-aged children were asked to report on their interactions with their supervisors at work and their interactions with children for 2 weeks (N = 520 workdays). Results show significant within-day spillover from the quality of mothers' perceived work interactions with supervisors to their reports of interactions with children. Supervisor criticism was positively correlated with harsh and withdrawn mother-child interactions on the same day. Supervisor recognition for good work was positively associated with warm mother-child interactions on the same day. Lagged analyses showed some significant associations between perceived supervisor interactions on a given day and mother-child interactions the next day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]