The impact of biological preferences on parental investments in children and step-children

A remarriage typically involves significant changes in a family’s financial circumstance, and these changes, combined with the relative bargaining relationship between spouses, likely affect the well-being of the children who are part of the family. In this paper, I use the separate-spheres model, a theoretical model that explains the determinants of bargaining power in marriage, to analyze how a remarried couple’s bargaining relationship affects their child investment in stepfamilies. Based on this theoretical model, I build and estimate an empirical model that investigates the determinants of parental investment. As evidence of parental preference for biological children over stepchildren, I find that an increased wage rate of a biological mother significantly improves her child investment when her husband is a stepfather of the child, while there is no such effect for mothers living with the biological father of the child.

Does Motherhood Affect Productivity, Relative Performance, and Earnings?

The Ladies Professional Golf Association provides a unique setting to examine productivity differences between women with children and women without children. In this paper, productivity is directly observed (e.g., the player’s golf score), unlike most studies that use wage as a proxy for productivity. Therefore, discrimination cannot be a source of observed differences in productivity between mothers and nonmothers, since the earnings of players are strictly determined by relative performance. Using panel data on women professional golfers, I find that motherhood lowers productivity. The productivity of women who eventually become mothers increases in the years before giving birth and then declines thereafter. The results support the human-capital explanation and Becker’s effort hypothesis of the family gap. One further finding is that marriage increases productivity.

Parenthood and Commitment to the Legal Profession: Are Mothers Less Committed than Fathers?

This research examined the relationship between parenthood and career commitment. Karasek’s (Administrative Science Quarterly 24:285–308, 1979) Job Demand-Job Control Model was used as a theoretic framework for hypothesizing the relationships between work and family demands, job control and social support and parents’ career commitment. Questionnaire data from a sample of practicing lawyers with children were used to test this model. The results show fathers generally reported more work demands than mothers; whereas, mothers reported more family demands than fathers. Job control and social support did not moderate relationships between work and family demands and parents’ career commitment. Perhaps the most surprising finding of this study, contrary to assumptions in the literature and the workplace, was that mothers practicing law are significantly more committed to their careers than fathers. This paper closes by discussing possible explanations for these findings.

Engaging Absent Fathers in the Treatment of Children

Absent fathers are often excluded from the treatment of their children for various reasons. They are often marginalized by mothers, and unintentionally excluded by clinicians. Absent fathers are also excluded from treatment in fear that their presence might undermine the competencies of single mothers, which social service agencies serve to empower. This article will discuss the potential benefits of including absent fathers in family therapy, and how to work with them once engaged in treatment.

Evidence of the Effectiveness of Child Support and Visitation: Examining Food Insecurity among Children with Nonresident Fathers

Over six million children who reside with a single mother and have a father who lives elsewhere are food insecure. This study examines the effectiveness of two aspects of nonresident father involvement, in-person visitation and financial contributions, in reducing food acquisition problems using data from the National Survey of America’s Families. We find that frequent visits by nonresident fathers are related to a reduced likelihood that the resident mother’s household will experience indicators of food insecurity. The effects of child support receipt on reducing food acquisition problems, however, are less consistent. Our results support policies designed to recognize and encourage nonresidential parents to make both monetary and nonmonetary contributions to the lives of their children.

Constructing Gay and Lesbian Parent Families “Beyond the Closet”

This paper provides a multilayered analysis of how lesbian mothers and gay fathers construct their families in a social context that has been described by Steven Seidman (2004) as “beyond the closet.” We stress how our participants’ family-building experiences are comparable to other non-biologically related families, but distinct due to heterosexual dominance. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with 18 lesbian birth mothers and 22 gay fathers, the authors discuss how participants navigate heterosexual dominance in institutions and in personal interactions.

Gender and Transnational Gossip

Transnational social networks powerfully shape Mexican migration and enable families to stretch internationally. In an atmosphere of such high dependence on social networks, it would be rare for families not to be affected by the opinions of others. This article analyzes this often-overlooked aspect of social networks, gossip. I analyze gossip stories prevalent for one type of migrant family, those in which parents and children live apart. Drawing on over 150 ethnographic interviews and observation with members of Mexican transnational families and their neighbors in multiple sites, I describe both parents’ and children’s experiences with transnational gossip. I show that in a transnational context, gossip is a highly gendered activity with different consequences for men and women. Although targeting both women and men, transnational gossip reinforces the expectations that mothers be family caregivers and fathers be family providers even when physical separation makes these activities difficult to accomplish.

The Influence of Social Supports on Employment for Hispanic, Black, and White Unmarried Mothers

This study considers the relationship between social supports and employment and how this relationship may differ for Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White unmarried mothers with young children. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this article examines how various perceived and received social supports influence later employment outcomes. Multinomial regression analyses indicate that family, individual, and family background supports promoted employment while community supports were associated with lower employment levels. Race-specific analyses indicate that supports were related to employment to a much greater extent for Hispanics and non-Hispanic Blacks than for non-Hispanic Whites. Results suggest that unmarried mothers’ unique needs and supports must be taken into account to accommodate employment.

Cracking the Code: Race,Class, and Access to Nightclubs in Urban America

Using ethnographic data collected in the downtown nightlife of Athens, Georgia, we explore black males’ responses to being rejected from nightclubs via dress code enforcement in predominately white settings. We contrast these responses to the general experiences of other black males who gained access. Although race is a factor in the enforcement of dress codes, we find a fluid relationship between race, class, and taste that influences black males’ responses and experiences. We illustrate how the nuanced reality of lived racial and class experiences for many young black males problematize the narrow interpretation of a black cultural essence.

Part-Time Work and the Gender Division of Labor

In response to the incompatible demands of work and motherhood, many mothers seek out part-time work schedules. Although many mothers consider this option “the best of both worlds,” scholars are divided about whether part-time work is in women’s best interest because it is linked to the gender division of labor in the home, and hence, to gender inequality. In this paper, we investigate the mostly unintended consequences of part-time work on the gender division of labor within the household. Drawing on 54 in-depth interviews with mothers who voluntarily work part-time, we explore how mothers experience household work and child care arrangements when they work part-time. Three factors emerged as most important in understanding how part-time work can shape mothers’ experiences of the gender division of labor: pathway to part-time work, work location, and work schedule. Depending on these factors, part-time work may be experienced as either enhancing or undermining of the gender division of labor, and thus, as promoting or undermining gender equality in their families.

Parents’ Beliefs about Emotions and Children’s Recognition of Parents’ Emotions

This study investigated parents’ emotion-related beliefs, experience, and expression, and children’s recognition of their parents’ emotions with 40 parent-child dyads. Parents reported beliefs about danger and guidance of children’s emotions. While viewing emotion-eliciting film clips, parents self-reported their emotional experience and masking of emotion. Children and observers rated videos of parents watching emotion-eliciting film clips. Fathers reported more masking than mothers and their emotional expressions were more difficult for both observers and children to recognize compared with mothers’ emotional expressions. For fathers, but not mothers, showing clearer expressions was related to children’s general skill at recognizing emotional expressions. Parents who believe emotions are dangerous reported greater masking of emotional expression. Contrary to hypothesis, when parents strongly believe in guiding their child’s emotion socialization, children showed less accurate recognition of their parents’ emotions.

Religion and high-school graduation: a comparative analysis of patterns for white and black young women

This paper examines how two dimensions of childhood religion—affiliation and participation—are related to the probability of graduating from high school. Hypotheses derived from a human capital model are tested with data on non-Hispanic white and black women from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth. The empirical findings are generally consistent with the hypotheses, revealing sizeable differentials in the likelihood of obtaining a high-school diploma by affiliation and participation. The results suggest that the convergence of Catholics to the mainline Protestant pattern for non-Hispanic whites found here, and supported by many previous studies, has not taken place in the black population. In other respects, the relationships between religion and high-school graduation are similar for the two racial groups.

The Impact of American Media Exposure and Self-Esteem on Chinese Urban Adolescent Purchasing Involvement

This study based on a sample of 429 Beijing high school students shows that Chinese urban adolescents’ purchasing involvement can be predicted by the adolescents’ self-esteem. Individuals’ self-evaluation motivates them to get involved in family purchasing activities. This study suggests that Chinese consumer involvement is potentially shaped by both cognitive factors (e.g., self-esteem) and social factors (e.g., media use). However, the study indicates that exposure to American mass media does not have significant impact on adolescents’ family purchasing involvement. This finding raises possibilities for further investigation in the area. Limitations and suggestions for future studies are provided.

Pathways to the Clinician’s Experience of Empathy in Engaging Single Mothers at Risk for Physical Abuse of their Children

Based upon an analysis of interviews from a qualitative study with twelve agency-based clinical social workers, this paper recounts three “situational pathways” through which these workers were able to experience empathy in the process of engaging low-income single mothers whose presenting picture involved physical aggression toward their symptomatic children who the workers were also seeing for therapy. The paper describes and utilizes self-psychological and intersubjective concepts to understand the therapeutic contexts that may enhance the worker’s potential for experientially understanding the client’s viewpoint. The relevance of the findings for practice and training is discussed.

Path to Poverty Alleviation: Marriage or Postsecondary Education?

We examined the role of human capital in determining economic well-being and marital status of mothers with children. We analyzed 1996 data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), a nationally representative survey of 36,700 American households conducted by the Census Bureau. The results indicate that among the human capital variables postsecondary education significantly improves the economic well-being of mothers irrespective of their marital status. Also, educated mothers are more likely to be married. These findings are especially relevant as we debate the importance of marriage in poverty alleviation.

The Monster Within: Countertransference Reflections on a Gay Adolescent’s Struggle with Sexual Identity

This paper concerns the author’s countertransference reflections on her work with a gay adolescent who identifies with powerfully destructive internal objects, including Hitler and the Monster. The author describes her countertransference inquiry through which she experiences her own potential destructiveness in order to help accommodate her adolescent patient’s rejected and disowned self states.

The response of household parental investment to child endowments

The theoretical and empirical literature on parental investment focuses on whether child-specific parental investments reinforce or compensate for a child’s initial endowments. However, many parental investments, such as neighborhood quality and family size and structure, are shared wholly or in part among all children in a household. The empirical results of this paper imply that such household parental investments compensate for low endowments, as proxied by low birth weight.

Antecedents and Consequences of Faculty Women’s Academic–Parental Role Balancing

This paper examines antecedents and consequences of faculty women’s academic–parental role balancing, defined as the process of experiencing greater interrole facilitation/enhancement than interrole conflict/depletion. It is posited that childcare responsibilities affect the career–family challenges academic women face, i.e., dueling tenure and biological clocks, reduced mobility for faculty women with children, and the illusion that a flexible academic schedule permits one to perform all the responsibilities of a full-time academic and a full-time parent. The paper presents a theoretical model of factors that serve either to contribute to or complicate academic–parental role balancing. Propositions about the relationships between these antecedents and role balancing, and between role balancing and its consequences, are identified. Practical implications of academic–parental role balancing are also considered.

Trauma and Origins: Post-Holocaust Genealogists and the Work of Memory

In the 1970s, as children of Holocaust survivors reached adulthood, many began to excavate, piece together, and re-fashion their fractured family histories. This movement achieved momentum in the 1980s and 1990s, as the so-called “second generation” moved into middle age. Drawing from data gleaned from participant observation on a listserv for children of survivors and from interviews, I argue that those who engage in post-Holocaust genealogy are searching for coherent narratives that place their own origin in the context of the families into which they were born. By seeking, borrowing from and selectively appropriating traces of the past, they are using them as raw material in the production of new stories about the past and, by implication, the present.

PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE: The impact of Nordic countries’ family friendly policies on employment,wages, and children

The Nordic countries at the same time exhibit a remarkably high participation rate of mothers and a more moderate decline in fertility rates compared to other Western countries. This has been attributed to the fact that the welfare state model and, especially, the family friendly policies chosen in the Nordic countries are unique. In this paper we evaluate the impact of Nordic countries’ family friendly policies on employment, wages and children’s well-being. We demonstrate that, although the ‘Nordic model’ has been successful in boosting female employment, it is a costly solution. Furthermore, family-friendly policies mainly directed towards giving mothers the right to be on long paid maternal leave have adverse effects on women’s wages with consequences for gender equality. Indeed, extensive family-friendly schemes may even have created a ‘system-based glass ceiling’ hindering women’s career progression. There is no evidence however of a trade-off between family-friendly policies and family welfare as effects on child development and children’s well-being of publicly provided child-care are found to be modest or even positive.