Jennifer March Augustine

Multigenerational Households and the School Readiness of Children Born to Unmarried Mothers

Following the ongoing increase in nonmarital fertility, policy makers have looked for ways to limit the disadvantages faced by children of unmarried mothers. Recent initiatives included marriage promotion and welfare-to-work programs. Yet policy might also consider the promotion of three generational households. We know little about whether multigenerational households benefit children of unwed mothers, although they are mandated for unmarried teen mothers applying for welfare benefits. Multigenerational households are also becoming increasingly common. Thus, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 217), this study examines whether grandparent-headed coresidential households benefit preschool-aged children’s school readiness, employing propensity score techniques to account for selection into these households. Findings reveal living with a grandparent is not associated with child outcomes for families that select into such arrangements but is positively associated with reading scores and behavior problems for families with a low propensity to coreside. The implications of these findings for policy are discussed.

Associations and Intervening Mechanisms Between Family Structure and Young Children’s Obesity

This study examined the links between different family structures—capturing type and stability thereof—and preschool-aged children’s likelihood of being obese. We build on the limited number of studies that have pursued this topic by using a large, nationally representative sample of preschool-aged children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey–Birth Cohort (n = 8,350) and exploring a wide range of mechanisms to explain these links. Results revealed that, compared with young children with stably married parents, children in cohabiting- and single-parent families that experienced a prior family structure change were more likely to be obese, except for children in single-parent families born to married parents. Children in step, stably single, and stably cohabiting families were at no greater risk of obesity. These patterns were largely driven by female children, for whom the effects of family structure were most robust. None of the 11 tested mechanisms explained such patterns.

Gender Disparities in Parenting Time Across Activities, Child Ages, and Educational Groups:

Although gender gaps in parenting time endure for parents of young children, and in physical and developmental care, men’s changing attitudes toward egalitarian gender roles suggest that gender disparities in parenting time may have closed in some contexts: particularly, in other shared activities with children, when children are school aged or older, and among higher educated parents. We investigate these possibilities using weekday time diary data from a nationally representative survey of parents participating in the American Time Use Survey (2003-2014; N = 28,698). In contrast to our expectations, we find that the gender gap in parents’ time with children persists when children are older, and even grow for some activities; extend to several other forms of shared parent–child time; and is often largest for higher educated parents. At the same time, there are notable contexts in which the gaps disappear, although they encompass the most pleasant activities, and least intensive stages of parenting.

Can Increased Educational Attainment Among Lower-Educated Mothers Reduce Inequalities in Children’s Skill Development?

A rich tradition of stratification research has established a robust link between mothers’ education and the skills in children that forecast children’s own mobility. Yet, this research has failed to consider that many U.S. women are now completing their education after having children. Such a trend raises questions about whether increases in mothers’ educational attainment can improve their children’s skill development and whether these gains are enough to reduce inequalities in skills compared with children whose mothers completed the same degree before they were born. To answer these questions, we draw on a nationally representative sample of mothers and children participating in the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLSY79 and CNLY), random- and fixed-effects techniques, and repeated measures of children’s cognitive and noncognitive skills. Contrary to existing research and theory, our results reveal that educational attainment obtained after children’s births is not associated with an improvement in children’s skills. Such findings offer substantial refinement to a long-standing model of intergenerational mobility by suggesting that the intergenerational returns to mother’s education are weaker when education is acquired after children are born. Results also highlight the limits of two-generation policy approaches to reducing inequality in future generations.

Health-related Parenting among U.S. Families and Young Children’s Physical Health

Parenting is a constellation of behaviors, yet investigations of the link between parenting and childrens health typically focus on singular behaviors. Thus, patterns of health-related parenting among U.S. families, associations between patterns and childrens physical health, and the prevalence of such patterns among different sociodemographic groups remain unknown. Applying latent class analysis to the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (2001; n=8,550) revealed six parenting patterns. The pattern characterized by high levels of television watching was associated with the worst overall health; the pattern characterized by the highest consumption of food and amount of outdoor play was linked to the highest odds of obesity. Children of less educated mothers and Black mothers were more likely to experience both of these patterns than the patterns associated with the best child health, but these patterns did not differ for Hispanics (versus Whites). Income differences only appeared for patterns associated with childrens general health.