The percent of families with parents from different racial or ethnic backgrounds has risen exponentially in the last decades. Approximately 14% of children were born into multiethnoracial (MER) families in the United States in 2015, more than double the rate from 1980. Studies show that MER couples are more likely to separate or divorce than their monoethnoracial (MoER) counterparts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Child Fam Stud
January 2021
Although negative associations between the frequency and intensity of marital conflict and children's adjustment are well documented, less is known about how parents' conflict styles are related to children's developmental outcomes. The present study examines whether exposure to different types of parents' conflict styles, during a child's first year of life, is related to children's behavioral outcomes in the first grade. Parents' conflict resolution styles (CRSs) and child outcomes were examined in a sample of 150 working-class, first-time parents and their children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The present study examined if caregivers' long work hours or shift work are related to children's sleep duration through the disruption of bedtime routines.
Method: Work hours and schedules, bedtime routines and sleep (actigraph assessments) were examined in a sample of 250 caregivers and their preschool children.
Results: Results revealed that consistent bedtime routines mediated the relationship between caregiver's work and children's sleep, such that longer hours and shift work predicted fewer routines that, in turn, predicted less child sleep.
The current study examines the relationship between working-class mothers' and fathers' job autonomy across the 1st year of parenthood and their children's behavior problems and adaptive skills in the 1st grade. Data came from a longitudinal study of 120 couples interviewed 5 times across the transition to parenthood and again when the target child entered the 1st grade. Mothers' job autonomy and fathers' work hours during the child's 1st year of life directly predicted fewer behavior problems and more adaptive skills in their children at 6-7 years of age.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
March 2020
Objectives: This article examines changes in life satisfaction around retirement exits for those with varying preretirement incomes, testing whether constraints on personal control and control over finances moderate the relationship between retiring and preretirement income.
Method: This longitudinal study draws data from the 2004-2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study to examine changes in life satisfaction pre- versus postretirement for three groups (the poor/near poor, financially vulnerable, and financially stable) of full-time workers aged 51-87 years (N = 970), and a subset (N = 334) who fully retire over a 4-year period.
Results: Controlling for baseline life satisfaction, health, job/demographic characteristics, and social engagement, ordinary least squares regression results show financially stable retirees report higher levels of postretirement life satisfaction relative to their full-time working counterparts, whereas the poor/near poor and the financially vulnerable report similar life satisfaction to those who continue working full time.
The aim of this paper is to examine the meaning of translational research in the work and family field. Specifically, we review findings from a longitudinal study of low-wage workers across the transition to parenthood and examine how this basic discovery research informs the next step in translational research, that of clinical practice. The authors describe three specific sets of findings that hold direct and immediate implications for interventions and policy that could support working families.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLittle research has explored linkages between workplace policies and mental health in working-class, employed parents, creating a gap in our knowledge of work-family issues across social class levels. The current U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe examine the relationships among the division of housework and childcare labor, perceptions of its fairness for two types of family labor (housework and childcare), and parents' relationship conflict across the transition to parenthood. Perceived fairness is examined as a mediator of the relationships between change in the division of housework and childcare and relationship conflict. Working-class, dual-earner couples ( = 108) in the U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study utilized longitudinal, self-report data from a sample of 109 dual-earner, working-class couples and their 6-year-old children living in the northeastern United States. Research questions addressed the roles of parents' gender ideology and gendered behaviors in predicting children's development of gender-role attitudes. It was hypothesized that parents' behavior would be more influential than their ideology in the development of their children's attitudes about gender roles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe explore dyadic parenting styles and their association with first-grade children's externalizing behavior symptoms in a sample of 85 working-class, dual-earner families. Cluster analysis is used to create a typology of parenting types, reflecting the parental warmth, overreactivity, and laxness of both mothers and fathers in two-parent families. Three distinct groups emerged: Supportive Parents, Mixed-Support Parents and Unsupportive Parents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this study, the authors examined the relationship between sense of control and depressive and anxious symptoms for mothers and fathers during the 1st year of parenthood. Participants were 153 dual-earner, working-class couples who were recruited during the 3rd trimester of pregnancy at prenatal education courses. Data were collected 1 month antenatally and 1, 4, 6, and 12 months postnatally.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Marriage Fam
February 2008
This study examines changes in leisure patterns across the transition to parenthood for dual-earner, working-class couples, as well as the relationship between leisure and marital quality. To this end, 147 heterosexual couples were interviewed across the transition to parenthood. Findings indicate that during the transition to parenthood, husbands and wives experience an initial decline in leisure, followed by a gradual incline after the wife's return to work.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article examines how the work hours, work schedules, and role overload of working-class couples are related to depressive symptoms and relationship conflict across the transition to parenthood. Data are from 132 dual-earner couples interviewed 5 times across the transition. Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that working evening or night shifts, as opposed to day shifts, was related to higher levels of depressive symptoms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examines the degree to which the division of household and child-care tasks predicts working-class women's well-being across the transition to parenthood. Women completed questionnaires about the division of labor and their well-being before the birth of their first child and upon returning to work. Results showed that violated expectations regarding the division of child care were associated with increased distress postnatally, and there was some evidence that this relationship was moderated by gender ideology.
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