The Impact of Adoption on the New Parents' Marriage

ABSTRACT

This literature review examines the effect of adoption on the new parents' marriage. There are many factors in common with the transition to biological parenthood. A general decline in marital satisfaction is related to the partners' ability to balance marital and parental roles, to expectations about the division of housework and child care, and to time demands. Adoptive parents' marriages are also affected by infertility and its investigation. Adoption, especially of older children, adds further strains, including differing responses to the child's acting-out behavior. Social support, including parent relief, can enhance a marriage. The paper also discusses needed research and implications for practice.     

The Best Laid Plans: Expectations,Preferences, and Stability of Child‐Care Arrangements

This study considers whether an earlier and more extensive search for child care, and a match of the type used to the type preferred, predicts arrangement stability. We used the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care to estimate multinomial logit models of arrangement changes over 3‐month intervals between 3 and 12 months (n= 958 children and 2,223 observations). Use of preferred care predicted greater arrangement stability, and parents who settled early on 1 option were less likely later to switch care types. Those who planned earlier were more likely to use their preferred care type and to use higher quality settings. This study encourages future research on how, when, and with what success parents search for child care.     

Cohort Perspectives on Women’s Educational Attainment and the Timing of Parenthood in Ghana

This paper examines the effects of womens educational attainment on the timing of parenthood across successive generations of women in Ghana. Given the more enhanced career opportunities in recent years, we argue that the opportunity cost of parenthood may be higher for contemporary educated women, and as such, they are expected to delay parenthood for longer periods than their counterparts in the past. Using data from the 1998 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we found that while higher maternal education associates with delayed parenthood, significant cohort differences were noticeable. Consistent with our expectations, the effect of higher educational attainment was substantially greater among younger women, indicating a longer transition to parenthood. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

‘Not worth mentioning’: The implicit and explicit nature of decision-making about the division of paid and domestic work

The aim of this qualitative study of 31 Dutch couples is to help us understand why the division of paid and unpaid work between women and men remains stubbornly unequal, despite women's gains in the workplace and rising educational levels. This study expands on other research by documenting daily implicit and explicit decision-making about the division of paid and domestic work by couples during a unique period of their lives: the formative years of their relationship, until they are expecting their first child. Our findings indicate that in general, these Dutch couples do not look explicitly at their division of paid and domestic work, and that this often perpetuates a gendered division of work. More explicit decision-making occurs when couples have a very strong preference for equal sharing, or when the partners disagree or feel frustrated with their current situation. One important finding of this study is that even the couples who prefer to divide the work equally often end up following traditional patterns. This has to do with the decision-making strategies they apply, which seem to be grounded in ambivalent feelings about roles and responsibilities and often romanticizing relationships. Such ambivalence functions as a barrier to more effective decision-making processes. Data from this study seems to suggest that couples wanting to share household responsibilities should, as a minimum, engage in explicit decision-making until they have developed egalitarian routines.     

The relationship between foster care families and birth families in a child welfare context: The determining factors

Children placed in foster care families usually continue to see their birth parents in supervised and home visits. These children deal with the fact that they belonged to two families in a context where the relationship between the two families is sometimes complex and tense. Based on 45 semi‐structured interviews conducted with foster care families and kinship foster care families, the present study examines the relationship between foster care parents and birth parents in a placement context, and focuses on the factors affecting the nature and quality of this relationship. The results showed that the quality of the relationship dynamics varies according to the following: how well and how often the parent–child visits took place, the birth parents' characteristics, and the foster carers' attitudes. The results also showed that placements in kinship foster care families were more likely to result in conflict and tension between the two parties than placements in regular foster care families.     

How parenthood experiences influence desire for more children in Australia: A qualitative study

The low-fertility debate in developed countries has focused on the limits to family size posed by the financial costs of raising children, and difficulties combining work and family. Little attention has been given to the physical and socio-psychological experiences of conception, pregnancy, birth and early parenthood, and their potential effect on parity progression. Womens rising education and workforce participation rates are often seen as key factors in fertility decline, offering attractive alternatives to motherhood, but research suggests that they also undermine levels of knowledge, confidence and interest in motherhood. Demographers have made almost no link between people having fewer children than they might otherwise have had and their previous childbearing and childrearing experiences. Interviews conducted in South Australia in 2003–04 with parents of both small and large families show that fertility and family size are influenced both negatively and positively by experiences of having had children. The paper argues that if low fertility rates are to be stabilized or raised in developed countries, then researchers and policymakers must consider the physical and socio-psychological costs of having children for parents, and provide support mechanisms so that experiences of parenthood contribute as little as possible to fertility gaps and delayed fertility.     

Tending to the Emotions of Children: Predicting Parental Performance of Emotion Work with Children

Scholars, recognizing emotion work as a type of domestic labor, have examined whether domestic labor theories explain emotion work. Few studies, however, have investigated the predictors of emotion work with children. In this study, the authors examine the usefulness of 3 domestic labor theories (i.e., time availability, relative resources, and gender ideology) in explaining relative emotion work with children. Data are from a random sample of couples with children (N = 96 couples). The results suggest that men's labor force hours are negatively related to men's relative performance of emotion work with children and positively related to women's relative performance. Further, women's traditional gender ideologies are related to increased relative emotion work performance with children for women and decreased relative performance for men. Relative income is also a significant predictor of women's performance of emotion work with children. The authors discuss the implications of the study.     

“How Can You Retire When You Still Got a Kid in School?”: Economics of Raising Grandchildren in Rural Areas

Increasingly, grandparents are being called on to rear their grandchildren when parents are unable or unwilling to fulfill their parenting role. These grandparent caregivers often find themselves in an economic bind. Financially, most are at a stage in life where they are looking toward retirement and reduced family spending and are unprepared for their new economic reality as second-time-around caregivers. Here, we use a framework of family financial well-being to examine the economic consequences of rearing grandchildren. Based on family life interviews with 26 grandfamilies residing in Montana, we explore the challenges grandparents experience generating and shifting income streams in later life, the variability in received income, and the array of expected and unexpected expenses incurred as a result of taking in their grandchildren. As custodial grandparents strive for financial well-being, there are few resources—especially in rural areas—to help them navigate these new financial waters.     

Marital and Parental Relationship Quality and Educational Outcomes for Youth

This research examines the effects of parental marital quality and the quality of the parent–child relationship on the educational progress of adolescents. Previous research indicates that family structure and economic capacity have significant effects on educational achievement and high school graduation rates. Few studies, however, examined the effects of the quality of the parental relationship on the educational outcomes of their children. This study is built on bioecological and social capital theories of human development suggesting that the capacity for child and youth development is enhanced when their primary relationships are supportive and provide them with social assets that encourage human capital development. The study uses data from the NLSY97, a nationally representative sample of adolescents who are being followed into adulthood. The findings indicate that family stability and living with two biological parents is a stronger predictor of high school graduation than parent marital quality and the quality of the parent–child relationship. But the data also indicate that parent marital quality and the quality of the parent–child relationship have a strong and positive effect on postsecondary education access among those who do graduate from high school. These findings are interpreted in light of the contribution of relationship quality to further educational involvement and the implications this has for workforce development and successful labor force competition in a global economy.     

Perceived Admiration and Transition to Parenthood for Black and White Married Couples

Perceived admiration was examined in this study as a mediator of marital quality and transition to parenthood among Black American and White American couples. Positive and negative dimensions of marital quality were assessed for husbands (n = 148) and wives (n = 155) during their 1st and 3rd years of marriage in a large-scale survey. Findings revealed that transitioning Black American husbands reported lower marital tension than transitioning White American husbands. Perceived admiration mediated the link between transition to parenthood and marital well-being for wives, and between transition to parenthood and marital tension for husbands. Results suggest that perceived admiration plays a critical role in understanding the transition to parenthood, regardless of race. Insights are offered for practitioners who provide relationship or parental counseling and education to couples during the transition to parenthood.