The Influence of Parental Financial Socialization on Youth’s Financial Behavior: Evidence from Ghana

How youth manage their money may influence their transitions to adulthood. This may be particularly true for youth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where many youth and young adults lack access to economic opportunities. Parental financial socialization is associated with youth financial knowledge, attitudes, and behavior in research studies conducted mostly in the US, yet little is known about the financial lives of youth living in SSA. Propensity score analysis and robust standard errors with multiple regression were used to examine the relationship between parental financial socialization and youth financial behaviors among a sample of 3,623 youth ages 12–19 and a parent or other adult guardian living in eight out of 10 regions of Ghana. Findings indicated that both parent- and youth-perceived parental financial socialization was a strong and consistent predictor of youth financial behaviors, as was receipt of earned income. Practitioners interested in empowering youth through financial education and inclusion programs might consider how to involve parents and other family members in programs and capitalize on opportunities for youth to have some earned income while they learn how to manage money.     

The Impact of Parenting Style on Children’s Educational Outcomes in the United States

This paper examines the causal link between parenting style and children’s educational outcomes. The existing literature seems to lack any effort to use a nationally representative data from the United States, to properly address endogeneity, or to examine educational outcomes beyond high school level. This paper attempts to mitigate these shortcomings. Drawing upon the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, it first used OLS and logit regression. It then applied the maximum simulated likelihood approach to get rid of endogeneity, thereby isolating the causal impact of parenting style on children’s educational outcomes. Findings suggested that parenting style mattered for children academic performance. Authoritative parenting style was found to be the best among all types of parenting style. Particularly, relative to uninvolved parents’ children, authoritatively reared children were predicted to have 1.1 more years of schooling and be 18.5, 13.6, and 16.3 percentage points more likely to obtain at least bachelor’s degree, associate’s degree, and high school diploma, respectively. Also, they had 5.5 percentage points less likelihood of being high school dropouts than children reared by uninvolved parents.     

Parental Health Outcomes of Children’s Migration: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia

This study uses experimental data from the United States Diversity-Visa (DV) lottery to explore the impact of migration of children on the sending parents’ health, helping to overcome the selection bias issue that plagues similar studies. Based on the inverted U-shaped relationship between BMI and longevity, the study finds that the health prospects of senders with BMIs under 25 increase weakly with migration, decreasing for those in the overweight category. In families with more educated fathers, migration improves the health status of the senders in all weight groups. Overall, it affects the emotional health of the senders adversely, but not in families which gain access to improved sanitation facilities due to migration. The most plausible explanations for this finding are that migration inflicts emotional costs on the senders due to separation from a family member, and that it potentially changes the senders’ perception of what constitutes good health.     

Effects of Parental Divorce on Teenage Children’s Risk Behaviors: Incidence and Persistence

It is generally difficult to separate the effects of divorce from selection when analyzing the effects of parental divorce on children’s risk behaviors. We used propensity score matching and longitudinal data methods to estimate the effects of parents’ divorce on their children’s binge drinking, alcohol consumption, tobacco use, marijuana use, and hard drug use. The children were between 12 and 18 years old in the first survey and between 18 and 24 years old in the second survey. Our results suggest that parental divorce significantly increased the probability of risk behaviors in their children. Moreover, many of these adverse impacts persisted over time, especially among teenage girls.     

Gender Bias in Parental Investments in Children’s Education: A Theoretical Analysis

Human capital accumulation is one of the main engines of economic growth. Thus, many LDCs have introduced laws over the past 30 years for compulsory education and have increased their investment in public schooling. Nevertheless, the level of education in most poor countries is still very low, particularly for girls. The goal of this article is to develop a model of household decision-making in order to better understand what variables affect parents’ decision to educate girls less than boys. In the first part of the paper, a unitary model, a non-cooperative household model, and a bargaining model are developed and compared to explain factors that might produce gender bias in investment in education. As a result, the number of years of education for male and female children depends on the different costs and returns of educating girls and boys and, in the non-consensus models, on each parent’s preferences and decision power. The second part of the paper contains a simulation of the models assuming different policies for increasing women’s education using figures from the Living Standard Measurement Studies of Cote d’Ivoire.     

Indirect Socialization in Preschool: How Teachers Harness Children’s Ability to Shape Peer Behavior

Qualitative Sociology - How do teachers use children to shape the behaviors of their peers, and which students benefit? In this qualitative case study of a half-day preschool classroom, I find that...     

Mothers’ Parenting Stress and Engagement: Mediating Role of Parental Competence

ABSTRACT

Guided by role-strain theory and the spillover hypothesis, this study used data (n = 2,637) from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the link between mothers’ parenting stress, perceived parental competence, and parental engagement when the child was age 1, 3, and 5, respectively. Analyses were based on a multiple-sample path analysis that tested direct and indirect effects for mothers of biologically intact and nonintact families. Mothers who reported higher levels of parenting stress at child age 1 experienced lower levels of perceived parental competence at child age 3. Higher levels of perceived parental competence at child age 3 predicted increased mother–child engagement levels at child age 5. Test of indirect effects confirmed that perceived parental competence mediated the relationship between parenting stress and parental engagement for mothers of intact and nonintact families. Implications are discussed.     

Growing Up in a Diverse Society: Adolescents’ Interest in Parental Religious Socialization Messages

Because Western societies are becoming increasingly religiously diverse, the sociocultural context in which young adolescents currently grow up differs from that of their parents. This raises the question to what extent adolescents are interested in communicating with their parents about religion. In a cross-sectional study of 498 Belgian adolescents ages 12–18-years (mean age = 14.94, SD = 1.34), we examined how adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion was related to the link between parental religious socialization messages and adolescent religious out-group attitudes. Testing two models, we aimed to understand whether (a) adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion mediated the link between parental religious socialization and adolescent religious out-group attitudes or (b) parental religious socialization mediated the link between adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion and adolescent religious out-group attitudes. Results revealed a dynamic interplay between study variables, and highlighted the importance of considering adolescent interest in communicating with parents about religion.     

The Impact of Parents’ Overseas Employment on Educational Outcomes of Filipino Children

Family structure, household resources, numbers of siblings competing for those resources, and parents’ own educational attainment are often important predictors of children’s education outcomes. Overseas migration of parents from the Philippines has resulted in increasing numbers of long-term separations of parents from each other and from their children. Western-based analyses might predict negative education outcomes for children as a result of parental absence. We find that separations caused by overseas migration often are either neutral or can have positive effects on schooling outcomes, at least among older children. Girls fare better in terms of educational attainment than do boys overall. Boys are often more affected by background variables, including parents’ international migration.     

The Effects of Children’s Health on Mothers’ Employment

When children have health problems, mothers face a tradeoff between the decision to work to satisfy increased expenses and the decision to stay home to fulfill enlarged caregiving needs, especially for children with chronic conditions. This research used an instrumental variables approach to investigate the labor market consequences of mothers due to burden to care children with health problems. We found mothers’ employment probability increased by 0.9% for every $100 of increased out-of-pocket medical spending, while employment probability fell by 1.0% for every half day of school/day care a sick child missed. By correcting for endogeneity we addressed a potential empirical bias. Analyses by subgroups showed that Hispanic mothers were less likely to work in the labor market with high caregiving burden. We also found that the effects of time burden on labor market outcomes were magnified for black mothers.     

Young Adults’ Life Outcomes and Well-Being: Perceived Financial Socialization from Parents,the Romantic Partner,and Young Adults’ Own Financial Behaviors

We examined how perceived financial socialization—from parents, the romantic partner, and young adults’ own behavior—was associated with young adults’ life outcomes and well-being (i.e., physical and mental health, finances, romantic relationship). Using data (N?=?504) from young adults specific to their finances, results from hierarchical regression analyses showed that young adults’ own financial behaviors were the most patterned, followed by financial socialization from the romantic partner, and then from financial socialization from parents (only objective financial knowledge). We discuss how young adults’ financial behavior, financial socialization from the romantic partner and, to a lesser extent, parental socialization are associated with young adults’ life domains, underscoring the developmental salience of increased financial capability and relationship formation and decreased dependence on parents during the transition to adulthood.     

Fathers’ Financial Support of Children in a Low Income Community in South Africa

We used data from the Birth to Twenty Cohort study to understand children’s receipt of financial support from their fathers in a low income, Black community in urban South Africa. Specifically, we (1) described fathers’ financial support over the life course of children; (2) estimated survival probabilities of receiving support for all children and not receiving support for children who experienced a parental union dissolution; and (3) identified factors that explained variation in the receipt of support after a union dissolution. Results suggest that most children received full or partial support throughout the life course. Furthermore, a high proportion of children received support after a union dissolution with much of the variation driven by pre-dissolution support, father’s education and the presence of extended kin.     

Family Socialization and Chinese Youth Children’s Development: Does psychosocial Maturity Matter?

The present study examined the effects of family socialization in the form of family processes and parenting practices on youth children’s internalizing and externalizing problems concomitantly in a sample of Chinese parent–child dyads. The results generally support that (1) family socialization is crucially influential on the youth outcomes, in which parenting is a function of family processes; (2) youth’s psychosocial maturity significantly mediates the effects of family socialization on their outcomes; (3) effects of family processes are observed more pronounced as compared with parenting practices; and (4) more complicatedly varying effects of family processes and parenting practices on the youth outcomes appear when setting free the mediations of psychosocial maturity across different structural models. Service implications of the findings and future research directions are briefly discussed.     

The Effects of Divorce on Children: Mothers’ Perspectives in UAE

This study examined the effects of divorce on children in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A structured questionnaire was conducted with 1,742 divorced women and SPSS was used for quantitative data analysis. The aim of this quantitative analysis was to determine the social, psychological, health, and schooling effects of divorce on children (ages 1–18) in the UAE. The study confirmed that children are adversely affected. The study found that divorce was associated with a higher incidence of several impacts of divorce such as economic hardship, lack of concentration in school, sleeping disorders, and challenge and stubbornness. This is the first study in the UAE exploring the social, psychological, health, and schooling effects of divorce on children and to gain an understanding of the unknown aspects of the divorce phenomenon in the region.     

Mid- and Late-Life Divorce and Parents’ Perceptions of Emerging Adult Children’s Emotional Reactions

A paucity of research exists pertaining to the experiences of emerging adult children in the context of parental divorce. This study uses Paul R. Amato’s divorce-stress-adjustment framework to organize a set of predictors that potentially influence parents’ perceptions of their emerging adult children’s emotional reactions to a divorce. Data come from a nationally representative AARP study, from which we analyzed a sample of 283 parents who experienced a divorce at age 40 years or older. Results indicate that parental gender, nature of contact with the ex-partner, divorce timing, time spent contemplating divorce, a history of parental divorce, and the reason for divorce influence parents’ perceptions of their emerging adult children’s reaction to the divorce. Implications, limitations, and future direction for research are discussed.     

Mothers’ and Fathers’ Ratings of Parental Involvement: Views of Married Dual-Earners with Preschool-Age Children

In this paper, we examine how married dual-earner mothers and fathers of preschool-age children rate their own involvement in parenting, and their spouse’s involvement in parenting. Five dimensions of parenting are examined: discipline, support for spouse, spending time with children, praise and affection, and attentiveness. Several comparisons between mothers’ and fathers’ ratings are made. We find that both mothers and fathers rated themselves most highly on praise and affection and lowest on discipline and also rated their spouse least favorably in terms of discipline. In general, mothers were more generous in their ratings of fathers, than fathers were in their ratings of mothers. These findings are discussed in light of self-determination theory, which is used to frame our analysis.     

A Qualitative Study of Parents’ and Children’s Views on Mediation

This qualitative study examined the benefits to children of family mediation for divorcing couples and the limitations of such mediation. To capture the perspectives of parents and their children, we invited 40 parents and 10 children to participate in the study. The parent informants reported that mediation improved the efficacy of their parenting and alleviated their children’s stress about their divorce. In contrast, the child informants felt they were powerless when involved in the mediation process and that they received limited support from the mediators. Strategies are proposed for improving the cultural applicability of mediation services for children in a Chinese society.     

Children’s Psychosocial Rehabilitation: Clinical Outcomes for Youth with Serious Emotional Disturbance Living in Foster Care

Children living in foster care are an especially vulnerable population who often come to the attention of Medicaid mental health providers. These children experience a high incidence of emotional and behavioral disorders and may have specialized treatment needs related to their living arrangement status. This study assessed whether Children’s Psychosocial Rehabilitation could effectively treat youth with severe emotional and behavioral disorders who live in foster care. Analysis of data from an open trial of 218 clinically-impaired youth, aged 3–18 years, revealed no reliable differences in treatment outcome between foster versus non-foster children, with a trend toward more favorable outcomes for foster youth. Findings justify further study of the effectiveness of this Medicaid-funded service for the treatment of youth in care.     

Ethnic–Racial Socialization in the Family: A Decade's Advance on Precursors and Outcomes

In the current decade, the U.S. population reached historically high levels of ethnic–racial diversity and reelected the nation's first Black–White biracial President. Simultaneously, scholars also documented significant ethnic–racial inequities in education, increased xenophobia, and a racial climate that revealed deep-seated ethnic–racial tensions. Given this backdrop and acknowledging the significant role that families play in youths' abilities to navigate their social contexts, the current review focused on the literature on families' ethnic–racial socialization efforts with youth from the 2010 decade. Our review of 259 empirical articles revealed that there has been an exponential increase in research on family ethnic–racial socialization in this decade. Furthermore, although it is clear that family ethnic–racial socialization is a robust predictor of youths' adjustment, the associations between socialization and adjustment must be considered with attention to specific socialization strategies, the confluence of strategies used, and the unique contexts within which families' lives are embedded.