Die Vereinbarkeitsfrage für Männer: Welche Auswirkungen haben Elternzeiten und Teilzeitarbeit auf die Stundenlöhne von Vätern?Work-family reconciliation for men: Do parental leave and part-time work affect fathers’ hourly wages?

As previous research shows, many German fathers would like to spend more time with their children, but long working hours often restrict their opportunities to do so. Parental leave and part-time work could help fathers to reconcile work and family. Yet, labor market theories predict that using such family-friendly policies may lead to wage penalties. Hence, many fathers decide against using such policies because they fear that parental leave or part-time work will lead to financial penalties and career disadvantages. This article evaluates this concern by empirically examining the effect of parental leave and part-time work on fathers’ hourly wages. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1991–2013 and Families in Germany (FiD) 2010–2013, results from fixed-effects regression analyses show that part-time work is associated with wage penalties, but parental leave is not – irrespective of whether fathers only took the two months fathers’ quota or longer parental leaves. The results hence indicate that the German parental leave legislation enables fathers to spend more time with their children while protecting them from wage penalties at work.     

Elterliche Arbeitslosigkeitsdynamiken und Bildungsverläufe vom Ende der Grundschulzeit bis zum jungen Erwachsenenalter

In the present study, we examine the influence of parental unemployment on the educational outcomes of children in Germany. We consider the educational pathways from the transition to secondary school until early adulthood at age 23. In particular, we focus on the question whether children of unemployed parents are less likely to enroll in tertiary education. In addition, we look at enrolment into educational tracks at the beginning and the end of secondary school. We use data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). We address the problem of social selectivity into unemployment by means of a comprehensive control variable approach within the framework of random effects-models. In addition, we estimate fixed effects-models using siblings’ information. As a result, it is evident that a significant influence of unemployment on educational outcomes can be observed both with comprehensive control of status characteristics as well as in sibling models. However, this does not apply to all educational outcomes and not to all forms of unemployment.     

Expectations,education, and opportunity

Using a long panel of youths, we establish a causal link between parental expectations regarding education and educational attainment. In particular, we use an instrumental variables approach to find that the child’s chances of obtaining a high school or college degree are increasing in the parent’s expectations of the likelihood of these events. We then use differences between the objective likelihood of a child’s educational attainment and the parents’ subjective probabilities to consider the hypothesis that lower educational outcomes among certain groups are driven by a “culture of despair,” where children are low-achieving because they are expected to underachieve. While we do find that children from households with lower levels of income, wealth, and parental education are less likely to attain high school and college degrees, we reject the hypothesis that this is driven by low subjective expectations of educational success. Rather, we find that parents from disadvantaged groups have expectations for the educational outcomes of their children that differ more from the statistical likelihood of these outcomes than do parents of children from advantaged households. That is, we find that parents in more disadvantaged households are more optimistic about the educational outcomes of their children than those from more advantaged households.     

Soziale Ungleichheiten beim Schulstart

Although there is a regular age of school entry in Germany, some children start school later than usual and some children start ahead of schedule. While there has been some decrease in delayed school entries in the last years, the rate of premature school entry has increased substantially. Paradoxically, while the delayed entry is primarily because professionals rate a child as not ready for school, the premature entry is mainly based on parents’ choice. The first aim of the paper is to discover whether kindergarten attendance can reduce the risk of a delayed entry. The arguments and hypotheses are mainly based on the theory on the ecology of human development of Bronfenbrenner. The empirical analyses demonstrate that low educated families profit most by kindergarten attendance, but only if the child begins attending the care institution before reaching age four. The second aim concerns considerations in regard to the decision of prematurely entering school. Socio-economic conditions are not as important at this point as compared with a delay in school entry. However, there are some effects indicating that higher educated parents foster a premature entry to elementary schools. The analyses are based on over 1.400 children in the relevant age group and their parents taking part in the large nationwide German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP).     

Reading dis/ability: interrogating paradigms in a prism of power

The dichotomisation of literacy instruction into phonics instruction versus a whole language approach fails to realise a fundamental tenet of providing equitable educational opportunities to diverse groups of children. Diversity becomes a problem to solve through ‘inoculation programmes’ or ‘special’ education expertise. Moreover, children’s individual strengths can fail to be realised because they do not fit well with the programme of the day. Instead of being appreciated for the value that they may bring in higher order conceptual and intellectual tasks, these individual strengths may be neglected at great cost to the individual child because they offer cheap reward in the shape of aggregate test scores. This paper is a philosophical piece, which in refusing to prescribe what one should do on Monday morning joins other strident voices in disability studies in education to question what it is that we are doing today. Whilst not scientific, this is important work – it emphasises the a priori importance of philosophical, moral and ethical questions – reminding science that children are dynamic social beings who cannot be manipulated like genes to ‘express’ themselves in ways more conducive to quick and cheap educational programmes.     

Der Einfluss der Arbeitslosigkeit und der sozialökologischen Kontexte auf die Bildungschancen von Kindern in Ostdeutschland

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which the family’s socioecologic contextual factors and parental unemployment influence children’s opportunities for participation in higher education. It is of primary interest how factors of socioecological environment such as living conditions, residential environment, and neighbourhoods in combination with unemployment influence the successful intergenerative transmission of human-capital. For the empirical investigation, data from a postal survey of households conducted in Dresden in autumn 1999 are used. The results show that the influence of socioecologic contextual factors should not be overestimated. The socioecologic contextual factors lose their influence for the educational opportunities of the children as soon as unemployment occurs in the family. Furthermore, the impact of parental professional status on children’s educational achievement is stronger in explaining educational opportunities than socioecologic contextual factors and unemployment.     

Perspectives of Looked after Children on School Experience — a Study Conducted among Primary School Children in a Children’s Home in Singapore

Singapore is known for its well‐developed public education. Although there have been prolific studies and advancement in pedagogy of different groups of learners, the progress has yet to capture the interest of children in residential care, and their educational needs remain a field lacking in discussion. This study seeks to give these children a voice by answering three main questions: (1) What have the children experienced in school? (2) How do they feel about these experiences? (3) To what extent are the children’s experiences and feelings related to their background?A mixed‐method approach that encompasses both quantitative and qualitative instruments has been employed to find out from the Primary School children in a local Children’s Home their perspectives on school experience. The findings reveal that looked after children do encounter greater challenges in school because of their unique background and lack of resources. Most of them would need to rely on the authorities in both the school and the Home for support if better experience and performance in school are to be achieved.     

Toward ethical approaches to the inclusion of peers with disabilities

What would it mean for program leaders and caregivers to shape the thinking of typically developing youth toward their peers with disabilities in a way that we could regard as ethically sound? The author weaves examples from his research in settings such as Girl Scout troops and Boys and Girls Clubs as well as his own parenting experiences to answer this question. He has found that it is commonplace for program leaders, coaches, and others to avoid direct discussion or acknowledgment of the disabilities of children in their groups, in the mistaken belief that this is the best way to demonstrate that all children are equal and to avoid the perception of discrimination. His interpretation is that this is not a product of thoughtlessness but of caring staff and volunteers who believe they are doing the right thing--the ethical thing--by avoiding acknowledgment of individual differences. Disabilities--even when they are readily apparent--are treated as if they were invisible. Rather than giving disabilities the "silent treatment," the author challenges us to go beyond the prevailing ethos and find ways to build on naturally occurring opportunities to learn more about individual needs and supports.     

Zur Nachhaltigkeit von Bildungsaufstiegen

The educational expansion has led as a whole to an upgrade of the educational level of the population and, for the individuals, to educational improvement. This paper examines how sustainable these educational improvements are, in other words weather the children of the educationally improved have the same educational opportunities as the children of those whose level of education is traditionally high. The results show that the social heredity transmission of educational success is based on a mechanism that covers several generations, with the result that the educational level of the grandparents still has a considerable effect on the educational opportunities of the grandchildren, a low educational level of grandparents has a negative effect on that of their grandchildren. This phenomenon is demonstrated using the Socio-Economic Panel. An empirically-based outline explanation that takes the theoretical perspectives of Bourdieu as its starting point is then developed. The results show that the upward mobility due to educational expansion is to some degree only transient, which challenges the notion of the sustainability of educational improvement.     

Wie Nachhaltig Sind Die Bildungsaufstiege Wirklich?

In their article on the sustainability of educational upward mobility, Fuchs and Sixt (2007) investigate both the structure and the mechanisms of social inheritance of educational success across three generations. In theoretical respect the authors assume that children of educational climbers might have less educational chances than children of parents and grandparents with a long academic tradition. Utilizing data of the German Socio-Economic Panel as well as applying binary logistic regression they confirm their hypothesis calling the sustainability of educational expansion in question. In the present reanalysis data of the German Life History Study on educational histories of several generations are analysed by multinomial logistic regression. It can be demonstrated that the results by Fuchs and Sixt seems to be a statistical artefact because of multicollinearity. Additionally there are significant indications that educationally upward mobile parents are able to transfer their educational success to their children provided that these parents are also able to realize upward mobility in the status hierarchy or in the class structure. These both mechanisms of social mobility are essential for both the self-dynamic and the sustainability of the educational expansion in West Germany.     

How do parents’ educational fields affect the choice of educational field?

This study examines the links between parental education and students’ choice of field of study in Norwegian higher education. In our interpretation of the results, we suggest a status group perspective that integrates risk aversion models, micro‐class theory, and cultural reproduction schemes. Complete Norwegian register data for all individuals born from 1955 to 1980 allow for a fine‐grained examination of diverse fields of study not attempted in earlier studies. The findings reveal that intergenerational reproduction of educational fields is widespread, but its extent varies across fields of study. The tendency is most pronounced among children of professional, educated parents with masters and higher‐level degrees. Moreover, the analysis shows that students who do not choose the same field as their parents nonetheless tend to choose educational fields close to those of their parents.     

Orphans at risk in sub-Saharan Africa: evidence on educational and health outcomes

Based on comparable data for eleven sub-Saharan African countries with especially high rates of orphanhood, we examine how orphanhood affects children’s educational and health outcomes. Using household fixed-effects to control for influences at the household level, we show that orphans do not only fare worse than non-orphans because they tend to live in poorer households, but that they are also at a disadvantage compared to non-orphans within the same household. They lag behind in education and are more often malnourished and stunted. (The coefficients on the health outcomes are only statistically significant for some of the countries and some of the health measures, however.) Moreover, we show that non-orphaned children not living with a biological parent are also worse off compared to biological children of the same caregivers. Educational gaps are particularly evident for children whose mother is deceased or absent. The additional effect of paternal death or absence is rather modest or insignificant in most countries.     

Does Selective Migration Matter? Explaining Ethnic Disparities in Educational Attainment among Immigrants’Children1

Understanding why some national‐origin groups excel in school while others do not is an enduring sociological puzzle. This paper examines whether the degree of immigrants’educational selectivity ‐ that is, how immigrants differ educationally from non‐migrants in the home country ‐ influences educational outcomes among groups of immigrants’children. This study uses published international data and U. S. Census and Current Population Survey data on 32 immigrant groups to show that as immigrants’educational selectivity increases, the college attainment of the second generation also increases. Moreover, the more positive selection of Asian immigrants helps explain their second generations’higher college attendance rates as compared to Europeans, Afro‐Caribbeans, and Latinos. Thus, the findings suggest that inequalities in relative pre‐migration educational attainments among immigrants are often reproduced among the next generation in the United States.     

The paradoxical role of social class background in the educational and labour market outcomes of the children of immigrants in the UK

Despite predominantly lower social class origins, the second generation of established immigrant groups in the UK are now attaining high levels of education. However, they continue to experience poorer labour market outcomes than the majority population. These worse outcomes are often attributed in part to their disadvantaged origins, which do not, by contrast, appear to constrain their educational success. This paper engages with this paradox. We discuss potential mechanisms for second-generation educational success and how far we might expect these to be replicated in labour market outcomes. We substantiate our discussion with new empirical analysis. Drawing on a unique longitudinal study of England and Wales spanning 40 years and encompassing one per cent of the population, we present evidence on the educational and labour market outcomes of the second generation of four groups of immigrants and the white British majority, controlling for multiple measures of social origins. We demonstrate that second-generation men and women's educational advantage is only partially reflected in the labour market. We reflect on the implications of our findings for future research.     

Effects of a Foster Parent Training Program on Young Children’s Attachment Behaviors: Preliminary Evidence from a Randomized Clinical Trial

Young children who enter foster care experience disruptions in care and maltreatment at a point when maintaining attachment relationships is a key, biologically based task. In previous research, we have found that young children experience challenges as they form attachments with new caregivers. They tend to push their new caregivers away, even though such children are especially in need of nurturing care. Further, many caregivers do not respond in nurturing ways when their children are distressed, which we have found is problematic for young children in foster care. We developed an intervention that is designed to help caregivers provide nurturance even when children do not elicit it, and even when it does not come naturally to them. This paper presents preliminary findings of the effectiveness of this intervention on children’s attachment behaviors. Forty-six children were randomly assigned to either the experimental intervention or to an educational intervention. For three consecutive days, attachment behaviors were reported across three distress-eliciting situations. Children whose parents had received the experimental intervention showed significantly less avoidance than children whose parents had received the educational intervention. These preliminary results suggest that the intervention is successful in helping children develop trusting relationships with new caregivers.     

Lessons from the interpretation/misinterpretation of John Ogbu’s scholarship

In November 2003, the Council on Anthropology and Education honored John Ogbu with the George and Louise Spindler Award, for exemplary and long‐term contributions to educational anthropology. But in March 2003, a noted economist condemned Ogbu’s work as serving an ‘oppressive function’. In this paper, such contradictory instances are cited as the author recounts his encounters with Ogbu’s scholarship. Disparate assessments of Ogbu’s ideas and legacy raise important questions. What responsibility do educational anthropologists have for how their research is understood? Which aspects of Ogbu’s legacy should we hold onto as his work is interpreted in politicized and polarized ways?     

Growing Up in A Single Mother Family and Student’s Tardiness: A Cross-National Study Exploring the Moderating Role of Family Resources

Research shows that growing up in a single-parent family has a negative effect on children’s educational level, whereas the relationship between family structure and test scores is less consistent or even nonexistent in some countries. Some authors suggested that something besides cognitive ability is responsible for the poorer school outcomes of children from nonintact families. In this study, we focus on a noncognitive outcome, in this case student tardiness, which is one of the components of problematic absenteeism. Using PISA 2003 data from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we find that children who grow up in a single-mother family have greater chances of arriving late for school in 16 of the 17 countries analyzed. Some studies have analyzed the extent to which the effect of growing up in a single-mother family is compensated by a high level of family resources. However, these yield mixed findings, which can be attributed to the differences between the countries studied. With the exception of Bernardi and Radl (2014), to our knowledge no study analyzes the heterogeneity of family structure effects using a cross-national approach. We find that in most of the 17 countries analyzed, a high level of family resources, such as home possessions, cultural resources, mother’s occupational and educational level, and mother’s type of work, do not compensate for the harmful effects of growing up in a single-mother family on children’s school tardiness.     

Children’s Musical and Emotional Meaning Making: Dialogicality in Instructional Interaction

This study concerns children’s aesthetic meaning making in terms of how it is constituted musically, emotionally, and dialogically. We investigate how two 10-year-old children collaboratively engage in the task of teaching and learning to sing a song. The research questions concern what musical and emotional expressions the participants responsively construct and how these expressions are addressed, both explicitly and implicitly. Adopting a perspective grounded in Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogue philosophy and more recent educational research in this tradition, the study explores how children’s affective reasoning is co-constructed in the process of song sharing that is also a sense-making enterprise. Interactive talk episodes, including facial displays, are transcribed, analyzed, and discussed. We demonstrate, from moment to moment, how emotive expressivity comes into play and how it refers to double dialogicality, both at the interpersonal and activity-specific level. Finally, on the basis of our findings, we discuss conflicting artistic and educational values.     

Parental leave benefits and breastfeeding in Germany: effects of the 2007 reform

While breastfeeding is associated with health benefits for both mothers and children, it may also make it difficult for mothers to return to the labor market early. Maternity and parental leave regulations have been developed to mitigate this conflict. In 2007, Germany passed a reform introducing a new parental leave benefit (Elterngeld). In this paper, we address the question of whether the new parental leave benefit impacts breastfeeding initiation and duration in Germany. We use the reform as an exogenous policy variation to obtain causal evidence on breastfeeding behavior, applying a difference-in-differences approach. Mothers in particular benefit from the reform especially if they were employed prior to childbirth or if they have a household income above the income threshold of the previous parental leave scheme (treatment group). The reform did not bring significant changes within the first year of a child’s life for all other mothers (control group). We draw on representative survey data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study. Three breastfeeding measures are used for the 2004 to 2009 cohorts: (1) breastfeeding at birth; (2) breastfeeding for at least 4 months; and (3) breastfeeding for at least 6 months. We find no effect of the Elterngeld reform on breastfeeding initiation but do observe an effect on breastfeeding duration. Our results are robust over various sensitivity tests, including placebo regressions, the application of matching approaches, and controlling for regional indicators, among others. Thus, our empirical results provide evidence that the reform’s goal of allowing parents to spend more time with their children during the first year of life also impacted breastfeeding behavior.     

Schulstruktur und Bildungsungleichheit: Die Bedeutung von bundeslandspezifischen Unterschieden beim Übergang in die Sekundarstufe I für den BildungserfolgStructure of the education system and educational inequality: the relevance of regional differences in the institutional conditions for educational attainment

The relevance of institutional arrangements concerning the German school system for social inequalities remains comparatively unclear, due to the prevalent use of only simple and mostly static categories. The present study adds to this debate and analyses the effect of different regulations at the transition to upper secondary schools on educational achievement and social inequality. Duration of primary schooling and tracking recommendations are taken into account. Empirical analyses are based on information of the related Education Acts (1985–2010) as well as data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). This approach constitutes a significant advancement as it allows for an overall identification of changes in the institutional features between and within states. Results indicate that children who attend primary schools that cover six instead of four years are more likely to be enrolled in an academic-track Gymnasium. These effects are especially strong for children with lower social background. There is no significant difference between secondary school systems with overall pure early tracking and school systems with fewer school tracks and delayed tracking in the sense that only students who don’t attend upper secondary school aren’t tracked after the fourth grade. Furthermore, the results reveal that the relative importance of (mandatory) track recommendations tends to be lower for children of parents with higher socioeconomic status, even if children in general are more likely to attend the Gymnasium at age 15, when the parents’ freedom of choice isn’t restricted by teachers’ recommendations.