Income,Relationship Quality,and Parenting: Associations With Child Development in Two‐Parent Families

Prior research suggests considerable heterogeneity in the advantages of living in a 2‐parent family. Specifically, children living with married biological parents exhibit more favorable outcomes than children living with cohabiting biological parents and with married and cohabiting stepparents. To explain these differences, researchers have focused almost exclusively on differences in the levels of factors such as income, parental relationship quality, and parenting quality across family types. In this study the authors examined whether differences in the benefits associated with these factors might also account for some of the variation in children's cognition and social‐emotional development. Focusing on children at the time they enter kindergarten, they found only weak evidence of differences in benefits across family types. Instead, they found that children living in stepfather families experienced above‐average levels of parental relationship quality and parenting quality, which in turn played a protective role vis‐à‐vis their cognitive and social‐emotional development.     

Marital Processes and Parental Socialization in Families of Color: A Decade Review of Research

Research published during the past decade on African American, Latino, and Asian American families is reviewed. Emphasis is given to selected issues within the broad domains of marriage and parenting. The first section highlights demographic trends in family formation and family structure and factors that contributed to secular changes in family structure among African Americans. In the second section, new conceptualizations of marital relations within Latino families are discussed, along with research documenting the complexities in African American men's conceptions of manhood. Studies examining within‐group variation in marital conflict and racial and ethnic differences in division of household labor, marital relations, and children's adjustment to marital and family conflict also are reviewed. The third section gives attention to research on (a) paternal involvement among fathers of color; (b) the relation of parenting behavior to race and ethnicity, grandmother involvement, neighborhood and peer characteristics, and immigration; and (c) racial and ethnic socialization. The article concludes with an overview of recent advances in the study of families of color and important challenges and issues that represent research opportunities for the new decade.     

Gay Fathers Expanding the Possibilities for Us All

Abstract

This article describes a qualitative research study of 21 men who became fathers as openly gay men. The fathers were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire in a focus group format. The data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. The narrative data depict the men's paths toward fatherhood. The themes elicited from their narratives suggested how gay men are changing traditional cultural norms for fathers, families, and masculinity. The authors propose that by degendering parenting, reconceptualizing family, and reworking masculine gender roles, gay fathers are expanding role norms in novel ways that may serve as alternative models for all families.     

Sex Differences in Parenting Behaviors in Single‐Mother and Single‐Father Households

Research on family structure has led some to claim that sex‐based parenting differences exist. But if such differences exist in single‐parent families, the absence of a second parent rather than specific sex‐typed parenting might explain them. We examine differences in mothering and fathering behavior in single‐parent households, where number of parents is held constant, and we describe individualist and structuralist perspectives for potential sex‐based parenting behaviors. We compare 3,202 single mothers and 307 single fathers in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Kindergarten Cohort). Results suggest that, although there are small differences in the parenting behaviors of single mothers and single fathers, differences are sensitive to demographic disparities and do not translate to academic deficits for children in either family type.     

Family Structure Transitions and Maternal Parenting Stress

Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,176) are used to examine family structure transitions and maternal parenting stress. Using multilevel modeling, we found that mothers who exit coresidential relationships with biological fathers or enter coresidential relationships with nonbiological fathers reported higher levels of parenting stress than mothers in stable coresidential relationships. Mothers who enter coresidential relationships with biological fathers reported lower levels of parenting stress than mothers who remain single. Mothers' resources, especially their relationships with biological fathers, accounted for most of the associations between transitions and parenting stress, with posttransition resources being more important than pretransition resources. Mothers with high levels of education were less affected by transitions than mothers with less education.     

Expanding “Irish Family” Repertoires: Exploring Gay Men's Experiences as Parents in the Republic of Ireland

ABSTRACT

This article explores gay men's parenting experiences and practices in order to seek insight into how gay men accept or challenge heterosexual family norms and how “family” is understood in the Irish context. It is based on small-scale qualitative research (interviews) with seven gay fathers. Despite the limited routes to parenthood for gay men in Ireland, the research findings indicate that the participants enjoy parenting and that they are motivated in their parenting practices. The gay fathers in this study are participative parents who have made significant decisions in their lives in order to prioritize their children's welfare. The diversity of family constellations and care arrangements that surround gay fathering in Ireland can expand family and care repertoires beyond the traditional biparent heterosexual norm. Gay fathers in Ireland appear to enjoy some security at the private familial level and in the responses from their families and communities, but they are keenly aware that nontraditional families are given less status in Irish society. Unlike other jurisdictions, gay parenting is not articulated by the gay fathers in this research as a rights-based argument. Instead, these Irish gay fathers are de facto activists who seek to “humanize” gay parenting.     

Sent home: mapping the absent child into migration through polymedia

Migrants and their transnational families document their children and child‐rearing practices on social networking sites (SNS) to enhance their social mobility. In this article, I identify a new group of migrant children, namely those sent home to their parents’ countries of origin for an imagined ‘good childhood‘. I demonstrate that polymedia – SNS and other platforms – sustain these children and create new norms of publicness and visibility in transnational parenting. Exploring how families document child‐raising across international boundaries, I show how the trajectories of parenting relationships remain open ended. I counter the predominant focus on transnational parenting as a kind of abandonment attached to left‐behind children. Instead, I refocus the research on the opportunities polymedia give families to create and sustain intimacies, thus making the trajectories of migrant families and children increasingly dynamic. Polymedia create important shifts in global migration – a transformation that requires changes in the way scholars approach transnational families and long‐distance parenting.     

“Moroccan youngsters”: category politics in the Netherlands

The article analyses the categorization of “Moroccan youngsters” as a problem group in the Netherlands. Since the 1990s Dutch‐Moroccan boys and young men are set apart as a problematic group that presents a social and security threat and an emblem of the failure of multicultural society. We analyse the intersectional “category politics” of Dutch politicians to situate Moroccan‐Dutch youngsters as problematic outsiders. Our analysis makes clear how national origin, culture, class and gender intersect in the categorization of “Moroccan youngsters” constituting a national‐cultural category, which is also defined in terms of a disadvantaged socio‐economic position. This categorization has important implications for policy arrangements and proposed measures. Existing schooling and training measures are seen as inadequate to end incessant intergenerational patterns of dependence and poverty. Intervention in the sphere of the family and parenting are deemed necessary to transform “Moroccan youngsters” into “good citizens.”     

Separation and Post‐Separation Parenting within Lesbian and Gay Co‐parenting (Guild Parented) Families

Gay men and lesbian women have a long history of jointly creating families and co‐parenting their children together. This qualitative study aims to explore the experiences of separation and post‐separation parenting within same‐sex parented families. This involved semi‐structured in‐depth interviews with 22 separated same‐sex parents in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and regional Victoria. An adaptive theory approach was used for the collection and analysis of the data. The paper explores data from a cohort of six participants who came from three different multi‐parent families who had experienced a separation – either their own, or that of other parents in their parenting group. The term ‘co‐parenting families’ was found to be confusing due to the different connotations within separation/divorce and same‐sex parent literature. Consequently, the term ‘guild parented families’ was created to describe these families. Participants from these multi‐parent families had very different experiences of family formation and separation compared to others within the wider separated same‐sex parent study. Separation of one or more of the parent couples within these families complicated their original plans and kinship ideals. Each of the families resolved this differently in their post‐separation arrangements. After separation, whole family narratives and/or the role of individual parents, were either questioned or revised as a way of resolving the complexity of their new kinship situation. Following separation, parents often relied on Western kinship norms that privilege biological kinship and the dual‐parent family to construct their post‐separation kinship arrangements. More awareness of families that begin with more than two parents is needed within separation research and amongst separation services and service providers.     

Child‐focused Parenting after Separation: Socio‐legal Developments and Challenges

In this article I utilise developing ideas in family law as a backdrop against which to discuss changing assumptions about parenting. In particular, I examine the gender‐neutral assumptions within family law in Australia and elsewhere in the light of seemingly contradictory evidence about the value of post‐separation fathering. That men were equally capable of providing effective parenting was by no means clear at the time that the principle of gender‐neutrality became common in family law—the 1960s and 70s. Only recently, has burgeoning research on fathering begun to more clearly affirm its value and to clarify the conditions under which pre and post separation fathering makes a positive difference. Paradoxically, it is at this very time that legally based challenges to the gender‐neutral, shared‐parenting philosophy of the 1995 Australian Family Law Reform Act have begun to emerge. The often‐perplexed interface between law, social science research and therapeutic intervention presents many challenges. I conclude the article by flagging a number of questions relevant to family therapists in this difficult field of work.     

Racial differences in marriage and childbearing: oral history evidence from the South in the early twentieth century

Using oral histories collected in 1938 and 1939 in the Southern United States, this article examines how African-Americans and whites viewed marriage and nonmarital childbearing. The authors document distinct racial differences in family norms and the sanctions that supported those norms. Giving birth outside a marital relationship was clearly not the stigmatizing event for African-Americans that it was for whites. The authors also found that African-Americans were more likely than whites to end marriages under similar conditions. These results suggest that debates about contemporary racial differences need to take into account the historical background, both cultural and demographic, of diverse groups.     

Cultural Influences on Immigrant Women's Labor Force Participation: The Arab‐American Case1

Research on the economic activity of immigrant women has flourished in recent years. The current study extends this literature to examine the labor force activity of Arab‐American women, a group whose labor market experiences provide an exception to hitherto accepted theoretical explanations. The employment rates of Arab immigrant women rank among the lowest of any immigrant group, while the rates of native‐born Arab‐American women resemble those of U.S.‐born white women. This study examines potential explanations for these differences using data from the U.S. Census and a national mail survey of Arab‐American women. Contrary to findings for other immigrant groups, differences among Arab‐American women cannot be explained by their human capital characteristics or family resources, but are almost entirely due to traditional cultural norms that prioritize women's family obligations over their economic activity, and to ethnic and religious social networks that encourage the maintenance of traditional gender roles. This study concludes by underscoring the need for additional research on the impact of culture on immigrant women's employment.     

Parenting as a Dynamic Process: A Test of the Resource Dilution Hypothesis

In this paper, we tested the resource dilution hypothesis, which posits that, because parenting resources are finite, the addition of a new sibling depletes parenting resources for other children in the household. We estimated growth curve models on the self‐reported parenting practices of mothers using four waves of data collected biennially between 1994 and 2000 on a nationally representative sample of 2,082 Canadian children aged 2 to 5 at initial interview and in continuously intact, two‐biological‐parent households. Results showed that when new children were added to the household, mothers exhibited declines in positive interaction, but increased their levels of consistent parenting. Taken together, these findings suggested that parenting resources were reallocated, rather than diluted, when family size increased.     

Creating ‘stability’ for children in step‐families: time and substance in parenting

Children are said to be in need of stability for a ‘successful’ upbringing. This article focuses on the implications of this for parenting and childrearing practices in step‐families. It addresses the ways that conceptions of stability for children in family policy are tied to a particular family form and to maintaining continuity in biological parenting obligations, while parenting research has largely been concerned with measuring the consequences of changing family forms for children. In contrast, parents and step‐parents in step‐families themselves have far more complex understandings about the creation of stability for children in their care, around issues of dis/continuity in linear time and the social and material substantive constitution of stability. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family Structure Effects on Maternal and Paternal Parenting in Low‐Income Families

Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Survey, a birth cohort study, this study analyzes the effect of family structure on parenting for 3,402 mothers and 2,615 fathers. To address the problem of omitted variable bias, fixed effects methods are used to control for the presence of time‐invariant unobserved characteristics that may counfound estimates. Marriage by itself did not influence the parenting of mothers or fathers, and there was little effect of family structure on maternal parenting. The presence of a romantic partner was important, as fathers who repartner had lower engagement scores and mothers reported cohabiting stepfathers to be more involved in the family’s life as compared to married biological fathers.     

Gender,Spousal Caregiving,and Depression: Does Paid Work Matter?

Studies have shown that spousal caregiving leads to psychological distress, but few have analyzed the moderating effect of paid work. Using the 2000 to 2012 Health and Retirement Study and two‐stage least squares regression models, this study found that caregiving increased women's and men's depressive symptoms. Ordinary least squares models showed that caregiving had more adverse effects on women's mental health than on men's, but these differences were eliminated in two‐stage least squares models that accounted for the bidirectional effects of depression and caregiving. The current study also found that for women, part‐time work attenuated the depressive effect of spousal caregiving, whereas for men, part‐time work exacerbated it. These gender differences persisted even for intensive spousal caregivers. The authors suggest that caregiving women who work part‐time may benefit from work‐related resources. Caregiving men who work part‐time, however, may feel distressed, as their work–family experiences conflict with traditional gender norms.     

Constructing an alternative family unit: families living with HIV/AIDS redefine African traditional parenting patterns

This article is based on a study, conducted at Inanda, of caregivers who mainly take care of children that are infected and/or affected by HIV/AIDS. ¹ 1. The discussion of this article emanates from a three‐year‐long study that focused on the after‐effects of HIV/AIDS. Six participants from 15 in‐depth interviews are used for the focus of the article. Based on recurring similar characteristics, the other nine participants were excluded. All the participants of the study were Zulu speakers, one of the main languages of the country. I use fictitious names to conceal their identities. It explores the reality and experiences of the family members. The focus of the article is based on data analysed following interviews with the caregivers. Family parenting experience portrays HIV/AIDS caregiving as an intense, emotional and powerful experience, filled with pride and hope as well as exclusion. Findings of the study reflect a change in the definition and practice of parenting. Another finding is that HIV/AIDS is forcing a redefinition of the concept and practice of parenting beyond the traditional boundaries of age, sex and gender. One of the main findings of the study was that the respondents' parenting practices and coping strategies are largely influenced by a strong commitment to the wellbeing of the children. The study found that, in relation to some community members, the respondents have a different parenting style. Their commitment depicts their self‐sacrifice, an indication of some continuity in what is expected of African parenting practice. The thesis of this article is that the HIV/AIDS context is principally responsible for a shift in the understanding of the concept and practice of parenting within an African context.     

Social support,family competence,and informal kinship caregiver parenting stress: The mediating and moderating effects of family resources

Informal kinship care is the most common form of care of related children and it occurs without the oversight or assistance of the child welfare system. This study examined whether and how social support, family competence, and family resources were related to parenting stress in a sample of 207 informal kinship caregivers. Results of GEE analysis supported the hypotheses that social support, family competence, and adequacy of family resources have direct effects on parenting stress in these families; and, adequacy of family resources mediate and moderate the effects of social support and family competence on parenting stress. Implications for practice, future research and policy are discussed.     

Maternal Cohabitation and Child Well‐Being Among Kindergarten Children

Using data collected from 10,511 kindergarten children and their parents from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort, this study examines child well‐being across cohabiting 2‐biological‐parent families; cohabiting stepfamilies; married stepfamilies; and married 2‐biological‐parent families. Findings indicate no differences in child well‐being for children living in cohabiting stepfamilies and cohabiting 2‐biological‐parent families. Multivariate models controlling for child characteristics, economic resources, maternal depressive symptoms, stability, and parenting practices show no significant differences across family types in child well‐being indicators, with the exception of reading skills. Important factors in explaining the link between cohabitation and child well‐being include economic resources, maternal depressive symptoms, and parenting practices.