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SYNOPSISObjective. This study sought to better understand parent relationships with kinship caregivers, with an eye toward parents’ perceptions of how kinship caregiver mindsets and behaviors surrounding substance use may have impacted parents. Design. Data came from transcripts of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 16 parents in the United States, who had substantiated child welfare cases related to substance use. Transcripts were dual-coded, and analysis was guided by the reflexive thematic analysis framework. Results. Parents described two different experiences with kinship caregivers. For some families, parents reported fragmentation of their support system; parents described caregivers as undermining their parental authority, disrupting attachment bonds, and communicating with children in ways that perpetuated stigma around substance use. Other parents reported increased cohesion among family members; parents described caregivers as supportive and empowering, particularly as they navigated mandated “recovery.” Conclusions. Findings offer insights to help inform decision-making by both practitioners and policymakers by giving a voice to parents as they navigate the complex systems of child welfare services and drug court programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on opioid misuse and child outcomes is scattered across subfields and nascent compared to scholarship regarding consequences for adults. This scoping review synthesizes studies examining postnatal consequences of parent opioid misuse for children. Findings from 52 studies showed a descriptive connection between parental opioid misuse and a range of adverse child outcomes including accidental poisonings, psychopathology, and child welfare system contact. It was unclear if connections between opioid misuse and child outcomes were due to opioids specifically or to related risk factors. Studies comparing opioids to other substances were inconclusive and few studies measured potential parenting mechanisms that may explain the association between opioid misuse and child outcomes.

Objective: The overarching goal of this study was to analyze qualitatively how parents in a state‐mandated family treatment court (FTC) intervention revised and performed their parental role while navigating a novel recovery role. Background: A large proportion of parents are involved with the child welfare system for reasons related to substance misuse. Prior literature makes clear that navigating child welfare interventions is incredibly challenging given the many requirements and expectations parents must meet to resume parenting without state oversight. No work to date has explored the role strain arguably inherent to the experience of being tasked with simultaneously revising the parental role and adopting and performing a new recovery role in the context of nonvoluntary state intervention. Method: Data came from transcripts of in‐depth, semistructured interviews with 21 parents who were former participants in FTC. Interview questions were designed to elicit rich, personal narratives, with probes for concrete examples wherever possible. Results: Variation in parents' role definitions and trajectories of both parental and recovery role performance were used to develop a typology of roles: role enactors, role revisors, and role rejectors. The three groups differed in how closely their views around substance misuse, parenting, and recovery aligned with the role expectations put forth by the state, leading to varying degrees of role strain and conflict across groups. Conclusion: Findings shed light on the experiences of parents involuntarily participating in both child protective interventions and substance use treatment—a growing proportion of parents that have been largely ignored in prior literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,481) to test whether the association between marital quality and divorce is moderated by premarital cohabitation or nonmarital childbearing status. Prior research identified lower marital quality as a key explanation for why couples who cohabit or have children before marrying are more likely to divorce than other couples. Using event history and fixed-effects models, we found that the effect of marital quality on divorce is similar for cohabitors and noncohabitors, with cohabitors more likely to end both high- and low-quality marriages. In contrast, the relationship between marital quality and divorce is weaker for women with nonmarital births; they are less likely than others to dissolve low-quality marriages. We discuss how commitment norms and self-efficacy might explain these differences in the association between marital quality and divorce. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

We investigate the link between premarital cohabitation and trajectories of subsequent marital quality using random effects growth curve models and repeated measures of marital quality from married women in the NLSY-79 (N = 3,598). We find that premarital cohabitors experience lower quality marital relationships on average, but this is driven by cohabitors with nonmarital births. Premarital cohabitors without nonmarital births report the same marital quality as women who did not cohabit before marriage. Nonmarital childbearing is more strongly associated with lower subsequent marital quality for White women than for Black or Hispanic women. Marital quality declines at similar rates for all couples regardless of cohabitation or nonmarital childbearing status. These findings are robust to numerous alternative model specifications.

This article reports on the influence of neighborhood-level deprivation and collective efficacy on children's antisocial behavior between the ages of 5 and 10 years. Latent growth curve modeling was applied to characterize the developmental course of antisocial behavior among children in the E-Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, an epidemiological cohort of 2,232 children. Children in deprived versus affluent neighborhoods had higher levels of antisocial behavior at school entry (24.1 vs. 20.5, p less than 0.001) and a slower rate of decline from involvement in antisocial behavior between the ages of 5 and 10 (-0.54 vs. -0.78, p less than 0.01). Neighborhood collective efficacy was negatively associated with levels of antisocial behavior at school entry (r = -0.10, p less than 0.01) but only in deprived neighborhoods; this relationship held after controlling for neighborhood problems and family-level factors. Collective efficacy did not predict the rate of change in antisocial behavior between the ages of 5 and 10. Findings suggest that neighborhood collective efficacy may have a protective effect on children living in deprived contexts. (Contains 3 footnotes, 4 tables, and 3 figures.)

This study highlights the heterogeneity in two-parent families and examines how adolescents fare when they reside in simple two-parent, blended, and stepfamilies. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N= 1,769), we find that shared biological children in blended families have worse outcomes than children in simple two-parent families, even though they reside with both of their biological parents. These differences occur for academic performance, delinquency, school detachment, and depression. Current explanations in the family literature do not account for the poorer outcomes of shared children in blended families. We suggest that the presence of half-siblings creates a unique family situation that is not accurately represented in the current family literature.

In the 1930s, the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) created maps of American cities that were used to restrict investment in minority neighborhoods, leaving a durable mark on redlined neighborhoods. Since the 1990s, place-based policies are one tool the federal government has used to reinvest in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Do these programs target historically redlined neighborhoods—and to what effect? In this article, we combine data on federal place-based initiatives from 1990 to 2015 and historical HOLC maps to answer these questions. Results indicate that formerly redlined areas received substantially more funding than areas graded more favorably, indicating concentrated investment in neighborhoods that had experienced disinvestment. Federal place-based funding was associated with increased property values in formerly redlined areas, but also reductions in the share of Black homeowners, suggesting racial disparities in who benefits from rising property values. We conclude by discussing the potential and the challenges of place-based policy to address urban inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]