The Role of Migration and Single Motherhood in Upper Secondary Education in Mexico

We investigated the link between migration, family structure, and the risk of dropping out of upper secondary school in Mexico. Using two waves of the Mexican Family Life Survey, which includes 1,080 upper secondary students, we longitudinally modeled the role of family structure in the subsequent risk of dropping out, focusing on the role of migration in single motherhood. We found that children living without a father because of international migration or divorce or separation are at a greater risk relative to children in 2‐parent households. Economic characteristics of the household provide a partial explanation for children living in single‐mother households because of divorce or separation but do not explain the greater risk of dropping out for children with fathers in the United States.     

Migration,Social Networks,and Child Health in Mexican Families

This paper examines the consequences of parental migratory strategies for children in three types of Mexican families: those living with their migrant parents in the United States, those living with parents who migrated and returned to Mexico, and those living in Mexico with parents who have never migrated. Using data on 804 children from the Health and Migration Survey (HMS), we found significant differences in children's health across the three types of families. Results also revealed robust effects on child health of the size of immediate and extended social networks and migration experience after controlling for potential mediators such as mother's general health, receipt of social support, and child's age and sex. Findings suggest that social networks and migration affect children in complex ways, offering health benefits to those with migrant parents in U.S. households but not to those living with parents who migrated in the past and returned to Mexico.     

Consequences of Parental Divorce for Adult Children’s Support of Their Frail Parents

Using three waves of data from the Health and Retirement Study, I examined the association of parental divorce and remarriage with the odds that biological, adult children give personal care and financial assistance to their frail parents. The analysis included 5,099 adult children in the mother sample and 4,029 children in the father sample. Results indicate that adult children of divorced parents are just as likely as adult children of widowed parents to give care and money to their mothers, but the former are less likely than the latter to care for their fathers. The findings suggest that divorced fathers are prone to be the population most in need of formal support in old age.     

Parental Migration and Education of Left‐Behind Children: A Comparison of Two Settings

The out‐migration of parents has become a common childhood experience worldwide. It can confer both economic benefits and social costs on children. Despite a growing literature, the circumstances under which children benefit or suffer from parental out‐migration are not well understood. The present study examined how the relationship between parental out‐migration and children's education varies across migration streams (internal vs. international) and across 2 societies. Data are from the Mexican Family Life Survey (N = 5,719) and the Indonesian Family Life Survey (N = 2,938). The results showed that children left behind by international migrant parents are worse off in educational attainment than those living with both parents. Internal migration of parents plays a negative role in some cases, though often to a lesser degree than international migration. In addition, how the overall relationship between parental migration and education balances out varies by context: It is negative in Mexico but generally small in Indonesia.     

Parents’ Expectations About Childrearing After Divorce: Does Anticipating Difficulty Deter Divorce?

Divorce is costly for parents because of the challenges of meeting children’s economic and socioemotional needs after separation. Using the National Survey of Families and Households (N= 1,935), we investigate whether expected economic and parenting costs deter divorce. Mothers expect higher economic costs than fathers, whereas fathers expect more parenting difficulties. Most parents, however, expect high economic and parenting costs. In a large minority of families, mothers and fathers differ in their expected costs. Parenting costs deter divorce, but economic costs do not once other family characteristics are controlled. When parents disagree, mothers’ parenting concerns are a greater barrier to divorce than fathers’ concerns. Finally, parenting costs are a greater barrier to divorce for unhappy than happy couples.     

The Stability of Child Physical Placements Following Divorce: Descriptive Evidence From Wisconsin

This study uses administrative data from the Wisconsin Court Record Database, linked with survey data collected from mothers (n= 789) and fathers (n= 690), to describe the living arrangements of children with sole mother and shared child physical placement following parental divorce. Contrary to prior research, results provide little evidence that children with shared placement progressively spend less time in their father’s care. We find that, over (approximately) 3 years following a divorce, their living arrangements are as stable as those of children with sole mother placement or more so. To the extent that shared physical placement is associated with increased father involvement and positive developmental outcomes, recent increases in shared physical custody following divorce may benefit children.     

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.

Adult Children of Divorce

Female and male adult children of divorce (ACDs) provided retrospective ratings of their relationships with their moth- ers and fathers prior to and after parental separation, and also eva- luated their current relationships with each parent. Pre-, post-separa- tion and current relationships with mothers were more positively evaluated than those with fathers. Post-separation ratings of relation- ships with each parent were lower than those obtained on pre-separa- tion scales, with some recovery evidenced on current relationship scales. The critical importance of parental cooperation, particularly for ACDs' relationships with their fathers, was especially indicated by the present findings. A positive relationship with one parent was also found to have contributed in a negative fashion to ACDs' posi- tive evaluations of their relationshiv with their other oarent follow- ing separation. Research utilizing 'a longitudinal apl;roach is sug- gested in order to further examine the differential qualities of ACDs' ongoing relationships with each of their parents.     

The Impact of Marital Quality,Divorce, and Remarriage on the Relationships Between Parents and Their Children

SUMMARY

This paper examines data from a panel study on the long-term effects of parental marital quality and divorce on relationships between parents and adult children. Attention is focused on whether these effects vary by age and gender of child as well as the theoretical explanations linking mother-father and parent-child relations. The relational quality between adult children (18-31 years old) and both mothers and fathers is examined from the perspective of both children and parents. Among intact families, parental marital quality has long-term effects on father-child relations, regardless of gender, whereas short-term effects are characteristic of mother-child relations and only perceived by mothers. Further, although divorce without remarriage hurts sons' relationships with both fathers and mothers, it hurts father-daughter relations even more. Mother-daughter bonds appear to be improved by divorce, with declines in income explaining a large portion of the tendency for divorce to affect father-child relations.     

Locus of Control and Marital Termination:

Abstract

This is a pilot study which compares the effects of two divorce laws on the functioning of parents and children immediately after the separation and two years later. The Parenting Act of 1987 in Washington state is a novel approach to divorce, which was intended to reduce parental conflict by focusing on parenting functions and responsibilities rather than on custody. Parents divorcing under the previous law (a no-fault, joint custody permissible approach) and their children were used for comparison. Two hundred consecutively divorcing couples, for each law, divided equally between a heavily urban county and a rural county were invited to participate. Both parents were asked to rate their own adjustment and the adjustment of each of their children. Respondents were surveyed again two years later. Proponents of the Parenting Act expected that the new law would reduce interparental conflict, help fathers stay more involved with their children, improve the reliability of support payments, and reduce the impact of divorce on children. The expected benefits of the Parenting Act were not demonstrated in this study, although children were somewhat more likely to reside with their fathers than children whose parents divorced under the “no-fault” law. Furthermore, the Parenting Act appeared to have an adverse effect on parents' post-divorce adjustment. However, the low response rate limits the reliability of these conclusions.     

Parental Divorce and Child Mental Health Trajectories

A process‐oriented approach to parental divorce locates the experience within the social and developmental context of children's lives, providing greater insight into how parental divorce produces vulnerability in some children and resiliency in others. The current study involves prospectively tracking a nationally representative sample of Canadian children of ages 4–7 and living with two biological parents at initial interview in 1994 (N = 2,819), and comparing the mental health trajectories of children whose parents remain married with those whose parents divorce by 1998. Results from growth curve models confirm that, even before marital breakup, children whose parents later divorce exhibit higher levels of anxiety/depression and antisocial behavior than children whose parents remain married. There is a further increase in child anxiety/depression but not antisocial behavior associated with the event of parental divorce itself. Controlling for predivorce parental socioeconomic and psychosocial resources fully accounts for poorer child mental health at initial interview among children whose parents later divorce, but does not explain the divorce‐specific increase in anxiety/depression. Finally, a significant interaction between parental divorce and predivorce levels of family dysfunction suggests that child antisocial behavior decreases when marriages in highly dysfunctional families are dissolved.     

Noncustodial Fathers Following Divorce

Noncustodial fathers are men whose parental rights and obligations have been altered through judicial action, usually accompanying marital separation and divorce. In the majority of divorces, physical and legal custody of children is taken from fathers and reassigned to mothers only. Despite the curtailment of their decision-making authority and despite the limitations imposed on their day-to-day presence in their children’s lives, in the majority of divorces fathers retain the duty to provide economic support for their minor children. The bulk of quantitative research on the post-divorce involvement of men as noncustodial fathers is structured by explora- tion of the interrelationships among these parameters: child custody awards, visitation privileges and performance, child support awards and compliance, and child well-being. The documentation of important linkages between child support compliance and child outcome have focused both social science and legislative attention on means to foster greater paternal acceptance of responsibility for children. Research using open-ended interviews and smaller surveys of limited samples have been of great importance in providing a richer understanding of the noncustodial father-child relationship. To retain(or for some, to build for the first time) a meaningful paternal relationship, men are challenged to find new ways to confront issues of autonomy, connectedness and power. However, societal supports for moving beyond the traditional polarization of genders and roles through which families have been organized are sorely lacking. The ways in which men respond to the changes precipitated by divorce are influenced by a number of factors related to their own self-definition as well as to the broader social context in which they operate. In order to design psychoeducational or therapeutic interventions that allow noncustodial fathers to adapt in ways that are beneficial to themselves and ultimately to their children, an awareness of these factors is imperative.     

How Childhood Circumstances Moderate the Long‐Term Impact of Divorce on Father–Child Relationships

Using retrospective survey data collected in the Netherlands in 2012, the author examined how childhood circumstances moderate the effect of an early parental divorce on relationships between fathers and adult children. Using adult children's reports about the frequency of contact and the quality of the relationship, he found strong negative effects of parental divorce. These effects are moderated by 3 childhood conditions. The more fathers were involved in childrearing during marriage, the less negative the divorce effect on father–child relationships. Father's resources also moderated the effect, with a smaller divorce effect for more highly educated fathers. Finally, high levels of interparental conflict reduce the impact of divorce as well, generalizing the stress relief effect to a new outcome. In general, the study shows that the impact of divorce is heterogeneous; that childhood circumstances play an important role in this; and that, under specific conditions, there is virtually no negative effect of parental divorce.     

The Effects of Divorce on Children: Married and Divorced Parents' Perspectives

Three hypotheses, derived from the social psychology literature, regarding the impact of marital status history on parents' attitudes toward the impact of divorce on children were examined. Married parents (n = 118) were expected to report more negative effects of divorce on children than divorced parents (n = 114); mothers and fathers whose own parents remained married were expected to rate the impact of divorce more negatively than mothers and fathers whose parents had divorced; and, divorced parents who initiated their own divorce were expected to report fewer negative effects of divorce on children than parents who did not initiate divorce. All three hypotheses were supported, extending the self- and vested-interest research to the divorce literature.     

Emigration and Schooling among Second‐Generation Mexican‐American Children1

In this Research Note, we investigate the prevalence and patterns of second‐generation Mexican‐American children's migration to and return from Mexico during childhood and consider the consequences of this migration for their schooling. Around one in ten second‐generation Mexican‐American children live in Mexico for some of their childhood. Strong patterns of return to the U.S. through childhood argue for their being considered as part of the Mexican‐American second generation even when in Mexico. Their rates of school enrollment in Mexico are much lower than for second‐generation Mexican‐American children remaining in the U.S. and cannot be explained by their weakly negative selection into emigration. We conclude that country of residence is a far more important determinant of schooling outcome than is migrant status in that country.     

The emotional toll of out‐migration on mothers and fathers left behind in Mexico

A growing body of research examines how families are affected by international migration; yet, implications for family members who remain behind are less well understood. Recent studies highlight implications for wives and young children when Mexican men migrate to the US, but have not yet adequately addressed the unique perspectives across the intergenerational family system, including the impact on parents when their adult children migrate. The current qualitative study explores the perceptions of transnational family ties among five focus groups (N=28) consisting of mothers and fathers of migrants in Mexico. An inductive, comparative method was used to identify emerging themes related to the emotional toll that parents of migrants experience. Salient themes included sadness, longing, guilt, and worry. The perceptions and expression of these emotions varied between mothers and fathers. Findings highlight the unique impact and distinct policy implications of Mexican familial transnationalism on parents who remain behind.     

Psychosocial Well‐Being and the Relationship Between Divorce and Children's Academic Achievement

As an unprecedented number of children live in families experiencing divorce, researchers have developed increasingly complex explanations for the consequences associated with marital dissolution. Current accounts focus on changes to family finances, destabilized parenting practices, elevated parental conflict, and deterioration of the parent–child relationship, to explain the impact of divorce. A less studied explanation draws attention to children's diminished psychosocial well‐being following divorce. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten cohort (ECLS‐K) (N = 10,061), I examined the role of psychosocial well‐being in the relationship between divorce and children's outcomes. The results suggest that divorce is associated with diminished psychosocial well‐being in children, and that this decrease helps explain the connection between divorce and lower academic achievement.     

Joint Physical Custody in The Netherlands and the Well-Being of Children

The frequency of contact with fathers and mothers and the amount of parental support for boys and girls is an important issue after divorce, from emotional, legal, and empirical points of view. In the Netherlands between 1998 and 2008, joint physical custody after divorce (when children actually have shared residences) has increased from 5% to 16%. It is therefore interesting to compare the effects growing up in the following different kinds of families actually has on children: (a) mother families with low contact frequency with the father; (b) mother families with high contact frequency with the father; (c) co-parenting families (joint physical custody); and (d) father families. The main conclusion is that, on average, the effects of joint physical custody for children, mothers, and especially for fathers, are slightly positive.     

Mexican immigration and the port-of-entry school

The results of an immigrant student census in a California port-of-entry school district are used to describe the educational backgrounds of Mexican immigrant students and to distinguish types of Mexican immigrant students by school entry patterns. Interviews with recently arrived Mexican immigrant parents reveal the educational and occupational expectations they hold for their children in the US. The study findings are used as a basis for raising policy questions and generating research issues. The most notable observation from the study is that the children of Mexican immigrants in La Entrada do not migrate once they are in school. Parents may be migrating back and forth between the US and Mexico, but children once in La Entrada do not leave the school to return to school in Mexico. The study suggests that the parents of immigrant students do not know how the US educational system works but they are interested in helping teachers educate their children.     

Migration,development and remittances in rural Mexico

The argument is that remittances to Mexico from migrants in the US contribute to household prosperity and lessen the balance of payments problem. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the incentives and constraints to development and individual economic well-being in rural Mexico. Examination is made of the financial amount of remittances, the use of remittances, the impact on development of remittances, models of migration, and migration historically. The viewpoint is that migration satisfies labor needs in developed countries to the detriment of underdeveloped countries. $2 billion a year are sent by illegal migrants from the US to Mexico. This sum is 4 times the net earning of Mexico's tourist trade. 21.1% of the Mexican population depend in part on money sent from the US. 79% of illegal migrants remitted money to relatives in Jalisco state. 70% of migrant families receive $170/month. In Guadalupe, 73% of families depended on migrant income. In Villa Guerrero, 50% of households depended on migrant income. Migrant income supported 1 out of 5 households in Mexico. Money is usually spent of household subsistence items. Sometimes money is also spent on community religious festivals, marriage ceremonies, and education of children or improved living conditions. Examples are given of money being used for investment in land and livestock. Migration affects community solidarity, and comparative ethic, and the influence on others to migrate. Employment opportunities are not expanded and cottage and community industries are threatened. Land purchases did not result in land improvements. Migration models are deficient. There is a macro/micro dichotomy. The push-and-pull system is not controllable by individual migrants. The migration remittance model is a product of unequal development and a mechanism feeding migration. Mexican migration has occurred since the 1880's; seasonal migration was encouraged. There was coercion to return to Mexico after the economic recession of World War I; the door was firmly closely during the Great Depression of 1929-35. The 1980 estimates of illegal Mexican migrants totaled 2-9 million, which is the largest flow in the world. US industrial presence and Mexican development have reinforced migration flows. Regional and international capitalist requirements govern migration.