Jennifer L. Hook

Care in Context: Men's Unpaid Work in 20 Countries, 1965–2003:

By situating men within the country and time period in which they live, social scientists are better able to understand mens housework and child care behaviors. The author proposes that national context, conceptualized here as womens employment practices and policies, influences mens unpaid work behaviors by shaping the benefits of specialization, the terms of bargaining, and the ease of adhering to gender ideologies and norms. Using 44 time-use surveys from 20 countries (spanning 1965 to 2003) combined with original national-level data, the author utilizes multilevel models to test hypotheses regarding the relationship between national context and mens unpaid work behaviors. She finds that mens unpaid work time increases with national levels of womens employment. Furthermore, the effect of children on mens unpaid work time depends on womens national employment hours, the length of available parental leave, and mens eligibility to take parental leave, which indicates that particular public policies affect men in specific household situations. The analyses document the importance of national context for the unpaid work behaviors of all men, especially fathers, and shift the research focus from the attributes of individual men to the structures that hinder and facilitate mens unpaid work.

Gender inequality in the welfare state: sex segregation in housework, 1965-2003.

National context may influence sex segregation of household tasks through both pragmatic decision making and the normative context in which decision making is embedded. This study utilizes 36 time use surveys from 19 countries (spanning 1965–2003) combined with original national‐level data in multilevel models to examine household task segregation. Analyses reveal that men do less and women do more time‐inflexible housework in nations where work hours and parental leave are long. Women do less of this work where there is more public child care and men are eligible to take parental leave. National context affects the character of gender inequality in the home through individual‐ and national‐level pathways.

New Fathers? Residential Fathers’ Time With Children in Four Countries

The authors examine variation in employed fathers’ time with children ages 0 to 14 years, using time use surveys from the United States (2003), Germany (2001), Norway (2000), and the United Kingdom (2000). They examine levels of father involvement and mechanisms associated involvement on both weekdays (N = 4,192) and weekends (N = 3,024). They find some evidence of “new fathers” on weekends in all countries. Fathers spend more time on interactive care and more time alone with children on weekends than on weekdays. Only Norwegian fathers, however, increase both their participation in and time spent on physical care. American and British fathers’ time with children, however, is more responsive to partners’ employment.

Distinct Subgroups of Former Foster Youth during Young Adulthood: Implications for Policy and Practice

Social policy concerning foster youth making the transition to adulthood has evolved significantly since the late 1980s (Courtney, 2009). The Independent Living Initiative of 1986 provided states funds for soft services intended to help prepare older adolescents in foster care to live independently by age 18. The Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 increased funding for such services, but recognized the need for continuing support past age 18 by encouraging states to provide the services up to age 21. That law, and its later expansion through the Education and Training Voucher (ETV) program, also expanded the kinds of support states could provide beyond soft services to include housing, health insurance, and direct support for postsecondary education. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (Fostering Connections Act) fundamentally changed the nature of federal support for young people in state care by extending entitlement funding March 2010

Multiple Jeopardy Poor, Economically Disconnected, and Child Welfare Involved

Although the welfare literature reveals a growing number of parents who are economically disconnected, meaning neither employed nor receiving cash assistance, little is known about the prevalence and impacts of disconnection among child welfare–involved parents. This study took advantage of a statewide survey of child welfare–involved parents to examine economic disconnection in this population and to explore the relationship between disconnection and parent engagement in child welfare. One fifth of the sample reported that they were economically disconnected, with several patterns differentiating disconnected caregivers from those who received benefits or earned income through employment. Disconnected caregivers were younger and more frequently had children in out-of-home placements as opposed to receiving services in home than economically connected caregivers. They also reported higher unmet needs for basic services, such as housing and medical care, but were more likely to report financial help from their informal network. Finally, disconnected caregivers reported lower engagement in child welfare services even when controlling for demographic characteristics, chronic psychosocial risk factors, placement status, and maltreatment type. The findings document economic disconnection among child welfare–involved parents and raise important questions about the implications of disconnection for families and for child welfare outcomes.

Incorporating ‘class’ into work–family arrangements: Insights from and for Three Worlds:

In response to feminist critics, Esping-Andersen (1999) added family to the state–market nexus by examining the degree of familialism across regimes. In the absence of the state de-familializing care, however, it is difficult to predict work–family arrangements without reference to the overall level of inequality and a family’s social location within it. Thus, levels of familialism interact with levels of economic inequality. I build on existing categorizations of how two-parent families combine work and care in European countries by adding an explicit consideration of how these patterns vary within countries by education. I utilize hierarchical clustering with data for 16 countries (2004–2010) from the Luxembourg Income Study and the European Social Survey. In some respects, refining country averages by education lends greater support to the tenets of Three Worlds, but also reveals a Southern European pattern distinguished by inequality in work–family arrangements more characteristic of liberal regimes. Findings also illustrate how countries that polarize between dual full-time and male breadwinner families largely polarize by education.

Dual-System Families: Cash Assistance Sequences of Households Involved With Child Welfare

Dual-system families, those involved with the child welfare system and receiving public cash assistance, may be more vulnerable than families connected to only one of the two systems. This study advances our understanding of the heterogeneous and dynamic cash-assistance histories of dual-system families in the post–welfare reform era. With merged administrative data from Washington over the period 1998–2009, we use cluster analysis to group month-to-month sequences of cash-assistance use among households over the 37-month period surrounding child removal. Close to two thirds of families who received any assistance either had a short spell with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or lost TANF. Smaller percentages had steady support. Families who lose assistance are less likely than average to reunify while those who connect to benefits are more likely, suggesting that coordination between systems may serve dual-system families well.