Recent Research Reports and News: September
2002
Fathers—Research | Children
& Families | Fatbers/Mothers
in Prison | Census Data
| Systemic Barriers
| Welfare Reform
| NCOFF Abstracts
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Experiments in Living: The Fatherless Family, Rebecca O'Neill,
CIVISTAS, September, 2002.
John Stuart Mill famously called for 'experiments in living' so that
we might learn from one another. For about 30 years we have been conducting
such an experiment with the family. The time has now come to appraise
the results.
'As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be
different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments
of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character,
short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of
life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try
them.'
In this passage from On Liberty (1859) the nineteenth century champion
of freedom, J.S. Mill, argued that there could be a public benefit in
permitting lifestyle experimentation. His reasoning was that, just as
we distinguish truth from falsehood by the clash of opinion, so we might
learn how to improve human lives by permitting a contest in lifestyles.
However, Mill did not expect such experiments to go on forever. 'It
would be absurd,' he said:
'to pretend that people ought to live as if nothing whatever had
been known in the world before they came into it; as if experience
had as yet done nothing towards showing that one mode of existence,
or of conduct, is preferable to another.'
In the 1970s and 1980s many people argued that the traditional family
- based upon a married biological father and mother and their children
- was outdated. Under the guise of 'freedom of choice', 'self-fulfilment',
and 'equal respect for all kinds of families', feminists and social
rebels led a campaign to experiment with different family structures.
Sometimes it was claimed that women and children did not need men, and
were, in fact, often better off without them. On occasion it was said
that families were not breaking down, they were just changing; that
the most important thing for children was their parents' happiness and
self-fulfilment; and that children were resilient and would suffer few
negative effects of divorce and family disruption. The idea of 'staying
together for the children's sake' was often derided. Some parents embraced
the new thinking, but not all of those who took part in the 'fatherless
family experiment' were willing subjects. As the idea that mothers and
children did not need fathers took hold, many social and legal supports
for marriage weakened. Some mothers and children were simply abandoned.
Some fathers were pushed away.
For a copy of the complete report, visit the
CIVITAS web site.
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Many Incarcerated Rapists and Other Violent Offenders May Have
Had Fathers Who Were Unresponsive to their Needs During Their Early
Years, Recent Study Findings Suggest, Charnicia E. Huggins,
Reuters Health, September 11, 2002.
Many incarcerated rapists and other violent offenders may have
had fathers who were unresponsive to their needs during their early
years, recent study findings suggest.
While this does not mean that the early father-son relationship
determines whether young boys grow up to become criminals, it may
have "major implications for the prevention of crime, particularly
the early detection and treatment of individuals who are at risk
of developing antisocial lifestyles and attitudes," write study
author Dr. Tony Ward of the University of Melbourne in Australia
and his colleagues.
To investigate, the researchers interviewed 55 men incarcerated
for child molestation and 30 men in prison for rape to determine
their perceptions of their early relationships with their mothers
and fathers. For comparison the study also included 32 men who were
incarcerated for violent crimes and 30 men in jail for non-violent,
non-sex-related crimes.
In general, study findings indicate that the fathers of the rapists
and violent offenders were less responsive to their needs than the
fathers of the other offenders, the investigators report in a recent
issue of The Journal of Sex Research. The mothers and fathers of
the rapists and violent offenders also did not seem to be as strict
in supervision and discipline as did the parents of the other offenders.
SOURCE: McCormack, J., Hudson, S. M., & Ward, T. (2002).
Sexual offenders perceptions of their early relationships. Journal
of Sex Research, 39:85-93.
For a copy of the complete article, visit the Reuters
Health web site.
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Children of incarcerated parents: Cumulative risk and children’s
living arrangements, Elizabeth Inez Johnson and Jane Waldfogel,
JCPR Working Paper #306, Joint Center on Poverty, July 23, 2002.
Abstract:
Children whose parents are incarcerated have, perhaps inadvertently,
been treated as one group, with one set of service needs. But, the
experience of parental incarceration is only one of many factors
that may influence how children are faring. We know for example,
that many children whose parents are incarcerated have been exposed
to parental (e.g., substance abuse, mental health problems) and
environmental risk factors (e.g., poverty) prior to their parent’s
incarceration. Child attributes, where the child is placed during
a parent’s incarceration, and the nature of the relationship
with the substitute caregiver may also influence how well a child
functions in the face of parental incarceration.
Another issue is that concern about this population has often
been directed at children who enter the child welfare system as
a result of parental incarceration, although most children of incarcerated
parents do not end up in state care. Of the 1.3 million children
of state and federal inmates in 1997, an estimated 24,000 were in
foster care and 155,049 were in the care of grandparents (the share
of these who are formal kinship foster care providers is unclear)
(Johnson & Waldfogel, in press). The remaining children live
in a variety of arrangements, including living with the other parent,
with other relatives, on their own, or in some other form of care.
Given that other pre-incarceration risk factors are often present,
it is likely that children in living arrangements other than foster
care have special service needs as well. But, we know little about
how these risk factors are distributed across certain living arrangements.
The primary goal of the current paper is to localize such risk
within specific living arrangements. That is, we want to understand
what risk factors are present in the lives of incarcerated parents
and their children, and if and how these differentially relate to
children’s living arrangements. By identifying potential risk
factors within specific living arrangements, we hope to contribute
to child welfare and community-based agencies’ efforts to tailor
and coordinate services to incarcerated parents and their children.
To this end, we use data from the 1997 Survey of Inmates in State
and Federal Correctional Facilities (U.S. Department of Justice,
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000) to address 3 questions. First,
what risk factors are present in the lives of incarcerated parents
and their children? Second, might children in some living arrangements
be more vulnerable than others? That is, do we see higher levels
of risk factors in certain living arrangements than in others? Third,
controlling for other family characteristics, do these risk factors
predict where a child is placed during incarceration? To provide
background for the reader, we begin with an overview of the literature
on the effects of incarceration on children. Next, we discuss how
substitute care arrangements relate to child outcomes. Finally,
we discuss theory and research regarding the cumulative nature of
parental and environmental risks and delineate a set of risk factors
that we will examine.
For a copy of the complete report, visit the JCPR
web site.
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Feds May Track Sex Differences in Drug Reactions, Suzanne
Batchelor, Womens' E-News, September 15, 2002.
As research continues to emerge showing women respond differently
and sometimes more adversely than men to widely used medications including
antihistamines, antibiotics and painkillers, women's health advocates
are pressing Congress to fund a permanent database to track gender,
race and age differences in clinical drug trial results.
Congress created such a program last year on a one-year trial
basis following two U.S. General Accounting Office reports critical
of the Food and Drug Administration's oversight of drug research.
One of the reports found that eight of 10 drugs the agency pulled
off the market over a four-year period caused increased harm in
women.
"Most physicians and patients are still not aware that sex matters
when prescribing medications," says Sherry Marts, scientific director
of the Society for Women's Health Research, a Washington nonprofit
group campaigning for the database, which is scheduled to expire
on Oct. 1 at the start of the new federal fiscal year.
The program's researchers studied how best to standardize incoming
drug-trial information on safety and efficacy and designed a database
to track and compare drug responses by gender, race and age. If
the program is made permanent, the database will compile gender,
race and age differences from drug trials in a way that can be shared--after
drug approval--with other federal agencies such as the National
Institutes of Health.
"We would like to see there's money set aside to get the database
up and running and continue. This is not a one-shot, one-year thing.
We want to see it grow," says Roberta Biegel, director of government
relations for the Society for Women's Health Research.
For a copy of the complete article, visit the Womens'
E-News web site.
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Are Cohabiting Relationships More Violent than
Marriages? Catherine T. Kenney and Sara McLanahan, JCPR Working
Paper #265, Joint Center on Poverty, August 1, 2002.
JCPR Abstract:
In response to increases in cohabitation in the United States,
researchers have recently focused on differences between cohabiting
and marital unions. One of the more consistent findings in this
emerging literature has been a higher rate of domestic violence
among cohabiting couples. A prominent explanation for this finding
is that cohabitors are not subject to the institutionalized social
control mechanisms that may limit violent behavior within marriage.
This article uses data from the National Survey of Families and
Households (1987-88 and 1992-93) to explore an alternative explanation:
differences in selection out of cohabitation and marriage, including
the selection of cohabitors with the "best" relationships into marriage,
lead cross-sectional samples to over-represent long-term cohabitors,
who tend to have more troubled relationships. We find support for
this explanation in evidence that there is no difference in the
level of domestic violence found in married and cohabiting couples
in the first year of the relationship but that violence increases
at higher relationship durations in cohabitation.
For a copy of the complete report, visit the JCPR
web site.
How Do Cohabiting Couples With Children Spend Their Money?
Thomas DeLeire and Ariel Kalil, JCPR Working Paper #290, Joint Center
on Poverty, May 5, 2002.
JCPR Abstract:
Cohabitation is an increasingly prevalent living arrangement in
the United States. Although the effects of living in a cohabiting
arrangement on child well-being are not fully understood, the literature
on children growing up in cohabiting families suggests that they
have poorer developmental outcomes than do those growing up in married-parent
families or in single-parent families. We use the Consumer Expenditure
Survey to see if cohabiting couples with children spend their income
on a different set of goods (i.e., have a different distribution
of expenditure) than either married parents or single parents. Using
a variety of analytical methods, we find that cohabiting couples
spend a substantially larger share of their total expenditure on
alcohol and tobacco than do either married-parent families or single
parents. Cohabiting couples with children also spend less on health
care and less on education than do married parents.
For a copy of the complete report, visit the JCPR
web site.
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Children Cared for by Relatives: What Services Do They Need?
Jennifer Ehrle and Robert Geen, Urban Institute, June 26, 2002.
Introduction (excerpt): In 1999 2.3 million children lived
with relatives without a parent present, commonly referred to as kinship
care.1 Separation from a parent can be traumatic for a child (Bowlby
1980). Research suggests that living with a relative may minimize
this trauma by providing the child with a sense of family support
(Dubowitz et al. 1994). At the same time, many children in kinship
care face risks to their healthy development, such as poverty, crowded
households, and living with less educated or single caregivers;2 yet
kinship families often do not receive the services they need to overcome
these challenges, even services for which they are eligible (Ehrle,
Geen, and Clark 2001). This brief looks at some of the specific service
needs of children in kinship care. We find that many children in kinship
care face personal health challenges and live in families experiencing
significant financial hardships. Yet many of these children, despite
being eligible, do not receive the services they need. Involvement
with child welfare agencies might provide a link to services for the
families caring for these children. Children living with kin as a
result of child welfare involvement (public kinship care)3 appear
to receive more services than children living with relatives without
child welfare involvement (private kinship care). Findings in this
brief are based on data from the 1999 NSAF, a nationally representative
survey of households with persons under age 65. The NSAF includes
measures of the economic, health, and social characteristics of over
44,000 households. This analysis uses the sample of children under
age 18.4 The parent or caregiver most knowledgeable about each child's
education and health care provided information on these children.
Estimates are presented for the subsample of children living in kinship
care, and estimates for children living in private and public kinship
care are compared. Among children in kinship care, the largest percentage
is teens (44 percent), a third are school-age (35 percent), and 21
percent are 5 or younger. Forty-four percent are black non-Hispanic,
38 percent are white non-Hispanic, 15 percent are Hispanic, and 3
percent are of another ethnicity. About half (48 percent) are female.
Nearly half of children in kinship care (46 percent) live with a caregiver
who is over 50, and most (90 percent) live with a caregiver who is
female. Most children in kinship care are cared for by a grandparent
(57 percent), but a significant portion (22 percent) is cared for
by aunts and uncles
The following
5 reports are part of a recent series from the Urban Institute:
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Married and Unmarried Parenthood and Economic Well-Being A
Dynamic Analysis of a Recent Cohort, Robert I. Lerman, Urban
Institute, July 1, 2002.
Introduction (excerpt): Over the last four decades, the
declining proportion of married adults in the United States has
contributed to a significant worsening of the economic status of
families with children. The rise in single parenthood, together
with limited child support payments, has meant that more children
must rely primarily on the income of only one of their parents,
usually the mother. As a result, despite healthy growth in per capita
income, child poverty rates in the U.S. have remained at their 1970s
levels. Researchers have demonstrated that reduced marriage propensities
have caused substantially higher child poverty rates, even after
accounting for the fact that the men unmarried mothers might marry
have lower incomes than current married fathers (Lerman, 1996; Sawhill
and Thomas, 2001).
On one level, it should be no surprise that single-parent families,
with fewer potential earners or caregivers, would have much lower
incomes than married couple families. But, in fact, understanding
the decline in marriage and its implications for economic well-being
is a complex problem. Given the dramatic increases in cohabitation
and the high levels of co-residence of single mothers with their
parents or other adults, many single mothers live with a second
potential earner/caregiver and thus do not have a built-in economic
disadvantage relative to married couple families. The simple distinctions
between married parents and single parents are no longer sufficient
for analyzing economic differences. The specific household form
as well as the timing of marriage, divorce, separation, and non-marital
childbearing will all be relevant to the way marriage and other
family structures affect economic hardship. The analysis must take
account of trends and patterns of marriage rates at each age, of
childbearing rates within and outside marriage, of the duration
of marriages, of cohabitation rates, of separation and divorce rates,
and of household living arrangements of single parents.
The low and unstable incomes of potential husbands are another
reason why marriage might not improve economic welfare of many mothers
and children. According to ethnographer Kathryn Edin (2000), when
asked about marriage, low-income mothers say that, "...marriage
usually entails more risks than potential rewards." Although some
of the risks relate to non-economic issues, such as domestic violence,
trust, and sharing control of the household, women often mentioned
the risk that potential husbands lacked the ability to earn a steady,
adequate income and that they consequently become an economic burden.
In a recent paper (Lerman, 2001), I examined the role of marriage
in limiting the degree of material hardship faced by families with
children. The paper's focus was on whether marriage limited the
incidence of material hardship, even among poor or near-poor families.
The results showed that married, biological parents experienced
lower rates of hardship than other parents with similar characteristics,
including those with similar family income-to-needs ratios.1
This paper analyzes the relationship between marriage and economic
well-being in a dynamic context. Using data on women and mothers
over time enhances our ability to distinguish a causal effect of
marriage from a selection effect. Cross section estimates are subject
to bias because individuals who marry may have unobserved advantages
affecting their incomes over individuals who do not marry. With
panel data, we can observe the income profiles over time of individuals
who marry and those who do not.
For a copy of the complete introduction and report, visit the
Urban
Institute web site.
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Impacts of Marital Status and Parental Presence on the Material
Hardship of Families with Children, Robert I. Lerman, Urban Institute,
July 1, 2002.
Introduction (excerpt): The decline in marriage is a well-known
and well-documented phenomenon, with major consequences for poverty,
inequality, and the use of welfare programs. The proportion of children
in families headed by never-married mothers?families with the highest
poverty rates and lowest incomes?jumped from less than 1 percent
in the early 1970s to over 9 percent today. Researchers (e.g., Lerman,
1996; Sawhill, 1999) attribute a substantial share of the rise in
poverty among children to the changing structure of families with
children. Even after the decline in poverty rates during the 1990s,
the poverty rate experienced by single mother families was over
35 percent, while about 6 percent of married couple families with
children had incomes below the poverty line. The differential in
chronic poverty is also high, with one-parent families facing a
two year poverty rate 10 times higher than the rate among two-parent
families (22.8 percent vs. 2.8 percent).1 An accumulation of evidence
also suggests that children growing up without two natural parents
do worse on a variety of social and economic outcomes.2
Given these realities, it is not surprising the Congress declared
promoting marriage and strengthening two-parent families as goals
of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act (PRWORA). States have so far done little to implement this goal,
but the Bush Administration and members of Congress have recently
sponsored legislation to fund projects to promote healthy marriages
through marriage preparation services, education programs, and public
awareness campaigns. These proposals for public interventions aimed
at directly promoting marriage are controversial partly because
of the skepticism about the ability of marriage to lessen economic
hardship and improve living standards, especially among people with
low education and earnings capacity.
The issue is critical for policymakers and for the public. The
Congress and the President must decide on how to structure a wide
array of taxes, transfers, and other public policies that provide
incentives or disincentives to marriage. In doing so, they sometimes
have to weigh the benefits of policies to encourage marriages against
the benefits of helping families with unmarried parents. Judging
the impacts of policies that discourage or shorten marriages requires
information on how policies affect marriage, how marriage affects
current economic hardships, and how marriage affects future outcomes
of children.
Most existing studies deal with the impacts of policy on marriage
and the impacts of marriage on children. Only a few studies concentrate
on how marriage affects the economic status of the less educated
or low-income populations, especially in comparison to a variety
of other family forms, including cohabitation.3 This study emphasizes
the effects of marriage and other household arrangements on current
economic well-being, with a focus on the less-educated and low-income
groups. Using data from the National Survey of America's Families
(NSAF), I measure the detailed family, parental, and household patterns
as well as 1997-1999 changes in these patterns. Next, I examine
the relationships between marriage and income-to-needs ratios as
well as between marriage and material hardship. The measures of
material hardship include such outcomes as cutting or missing meals
because of an inability to buy food and not having enough money
to pay rent, mortgage payments, or utilities.
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How Do Marriage, Cohabitation, and Single Parenthood Affect
the Material Hardships of Families with Children? Robert I.
Lerman, Urban Institute, July 1, 2002.
Introduction (excerpt): The decline in marriage and associated
two-parent families in the United States continues to complicate efforts
to reduce child poverty. Although the 30-year trend away from two-parent
families has slowed in recent years, the share of children living
outside married couple families remains high. About one in three children
live in one-parent families and nearly 40 percent live away from at
least one biological parent. The negative impact on poverty and inequality
is well documented. Recent estimates suggest that were marriage rates
at levels of the early 1970s, the 1998 US child poverty rate would
have been 3.5 percentage points lower (Thomas and Sawhill 2001), as
would income inequality among children (Lerman 1996). Waite and Gallagher
(2000) report a number of other positive economic and social effects
of marriage.
Yet, questions have been raised about whether the economic benefits
of marriage extend to low-income, less educated women. Kim Gandy,
president of the National Organization for Women, reportedly argued,
"To say that the path to economic stability for poor women is marriage
is an outrage." (Toner 2002). The worry is that the prospective
spouses of low-income women and men are themselves too poor or too
limited in their earnings capacities to contribute significantly
to the family's resources (see Edin 2000). While the lack of a second
earner complicates the economic problems of less educated mothers,
another adult with zero or low earnings would hardly be a solution.
On the other hand, a second earner or caregiver need only provide
about $2,000-$3,700 in earnings in order to offset the increase
in family needs required by an additional person.1
The focus of much of the discussion about the economic benefits
of marriage is on the distinction between married couple families
and single parent families. Yet, as some authors emphasized decades
ago (e.g., Stack and Simmel, 1974), low-income single parents are
often able to draw on other family members for support, either formally
or informally. The presence of other adults could, in principle,
limit the advantages of marriage associated with economies of scale
in household production, with the division of labor and risk sharing
among adults (Lerman 2002). If so, the economic benefits from marriage
could be modest or zero relative to such family forms as cohabitation
or single parenthood with other adults present in the household.
A second issue arising in estimating the gains from marriage among
adults with low earnings capacities is that income, even income
relative to needs, may be a weak measure of economic well being.
Current income relative to needs does not take account of permanent
income, income variability, wealth accumulation, or the ability
to draw on resources of relatives and friends. Broader measures
of economic well being may be of special importance to low-income
families trying to avoid material hardships. As Mayer and Jencks
(1989) demonstrated, income poverty offers only part of the explanation
for the experience of material hardships. Some families may manage
their budgets better than others. Measured income may understate
actual income and the ability to consume, particularly for low-income
families. While some poor families are experiencing material hardships,
other equally poor families are able to avoid these problems by
drawing on assets or on help from friends.
Marriage might well offer families a better chance for asset building
and transfers from friends and family. Hao (1996) points to the
less extensive networks available to mothers with cohabiting partners
and to single parents who receive little from the kin of non-custodial
fathers. Hao finds that while single parents and cohabiting couples
are less likely to receive transfers from the kin of the absent
biological parent, they are more likely to obtain transfers from
friends. Apparently, the higher transfers to married couples encourage
wealth accumulation and add to the wealth advantage married couples
have over cohabiting couples and single parents.
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Marriage and the Economic Well-Being of Families with Children:
A Review of the Literature, Robert I. Lerman, Urban Institute,
July 01, 2002.
Introduction (excerpt):
The last four decades of the twentieth century witnessed a series
of changes that have been described as an "earthquake that shuddered
through the American family" (Preston 1984). These changes?which include
very large increases in non-marital childbearing and cohabitation,
higher ages at first marriage, and higher rates of divorce and separation?have
had a direct and profound impact on the well-being of American children.
In 1998, only 68 percent of all children in the United States lived
with both parents (Lang and Zagorsky 2000), and more than half of
all children can now expect to spend at least some part of their childhood
in a single-parent family. In 2000, two in five children in families
headed by single women (39.7 percent) were poor compared to only 8.1
percent of children in married families (U.S. Census Bureau 2000).
These changes in family structure have caused a great deal, perhaps all, of the increases in child poverty between the early 1970s and the 1990s (Lerman 1996; Sawhill 1999). In addition, the shift toward single-parent families may have contributed to a higher incidence of other social problems, such as higher rates of school dropouts, of alcohol and drug use, of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing, and of juvenile delinquency (Lang and Zagorsky 2000; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994). Family structure has become so important to the well-being of American children that some observers now argue that marriage is replacing race, class, or neighborhood as the greatest source of division in the U.S. (Rector, Johnson, and Fagan 2001; Rauch 2001).
Recognizing the critical role of family structure, especially in low-income communities, the Congress placed the issue of marriage on the nation's legislative agenda when it passed new welfare laws in 1996 under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA, P. L. 104-193). PRWORA emphasized marriage as the foundation of a successful society and as critical to the interests of children. PRWORA aimed not only to expand work and reduce welfare dependency, but also specified explicit goals to "end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting...marriage," "prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies," and "encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families."
In the six years since the passage of PRWORA, the idea of a public policy role in promoting marriage has gained strength. In the context of reauthorizing the primary welfare program (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, or TANF), the Bush Administration proposed funding for efforts to support healthy marriages through education, training, mentoring, public advertising, and reducing financial disincentives to marry. Yet, initiatives aimed at promoting healthy marriages are controversial. Some object to the initiative on philosophical grounds, arguing that the government should not involve itself in such deeply personal matters. Others question the effectiveness of spending money on marriage promotion as a way of reducing poverty. A common argument is that providing single mothers with financial supports can do more than marriage promotion to reduce child poverty. Some worry that marriage promotion might end up penalizing single-parent families or ignoring the potential dangers of additional domestic violence. Still another concern is that marriage promotion efforts will do little for minority families, partly because of the weak earnings capacities of minority men (Mincy 2001). Instead of promoting marriage, many advocate policies to help non-custodial parents contribute additional child support and become more involved in the lives of their children. Such efforts could include employment and training services for non-custodial fathers and other low-income men, reforming the public child support enforcement system to reduce work disincentives, and offering transitional employment and case management services to ex-offenders (Holzer and Offner 2002; Sorensen, Mincy, and Halpern 2000).
Without a significant change in the earnings capacities of low-income men, opponents of marriage initiatives argue that families who are at a high risk of poverty will gain few economic benefits from marriage. Indeed, marriage may actually worsen rather than ease economic hardship (Lichter, Graefe, and Brown 2001; Edin 2000).
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The Kids Are Alright? Children's Well-Being and the Rise in
Cohabitation, Gregory Acs, Sandi Nelson, Urban Institute,
July 1, 2002.
Introduction (excerpt): During the late 1990s, the share
of children living in single-mother families declined significantly
(Acs and Nelson 2001; Cherlin and Fomby 2002; Dupree and Primus
2001). Rather than a concomitant rise in the share of children living
with married parents however, the data show an increase in cohabitation
(Acs and Nelson 2001). This is a source of concern for policymakers
and analysts because previous research demonstrates that living
with cohabitors is not as beneficial to children as living with
married parents and, in some cases, no better than living with a
single parent (Nelson, Clark, and Acs 2001; Manning and Lichter
1996).
Indeed, many policymakers, including President Bush, believe that
when Congress reauthorizes the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
block grant (welfare), it must include funding aimed at promoting
marriage. Implicit in this view is the idea that couples should
marry before having children and cohabiting couples that already
have children should marry. This brief re-examines the relationship
between children's living arrangements and their well-being. Further,
it investigates whether the well-being of children in cohabiting
families is changing for the better (or worse) as this living arrangement
becomes more common.
This brief begins by discussing previous research on how living
arrangements in general and cohabitation in particular can affect
children's material well-being and socioeconomic outcomes. Next,
it documents how poverty rates and food insecurity differ across
living arrangements, using data from the 1999 National Survey of
America's Families (NSAF).1 Similarly, it also examines how other
measures of child well-being, such as the share of young children
(age 0-5) who are read to infrequently and the share of older children
(age 6-11) and teens who exhibit behavioral problems, vary by living
arrangements. Finally, it focuses on how and why the relationship
between cohabitation and well-being is changing compared with overall
trends using data from both the 1997 and 1999 NSAFs.
We find that children living with cohabitors are more likely to
be poor, food insecure, read to infrequently, and exhibit behavioral
problems than children living with married couples but less likely
to be poor and food insecure than those living with a single mother.
Between 1997 and 1999, there is some evidence to suggest that the
well-being of children living with both their unmarried biological
parents (i.e., cohabiting parent families) improved relative to
children in general. However, this is not the case for children
living with one parent and that parent's boyfriend/girlfriend who
is not the child's father/mother (i.e., cohabiting partner families).
Finally, we find that the changing characteristics of cohabiting
parents account for about one-third of the decline in poverty among
children living with unmarried parents.
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Many Grandparents Back in Parenting Loop, Jodi Spiegel
Arthur, Courier Times of Bucks County (PA), September 15, 2002.
Elizabeth Cole's three grandchildren have spent most of their young
lives with her. During part of that time, their parents lived there
with them, but for the past three years, it's been only Cole, Tyler,
9, Courtney, 7, and Madison, 4.
Cole's family is part of a growing number of families with children
cared for by relatives - most of them grandparents. Nationwide,
nearly 2.5 million grandparents are responsible for their grandchildren,
according to the 2000 census.
In Pennsylvania, 80,423 grandparents act as primary caregivers
for their grandchildren, according to the census. In Bucks County,
the number of caregiver grandparents is 2,574. The 2000 census was
the first time the U.S. Census Bureau counted the number of grandparents
caring for grandchildren - indicating the trend has become significant
enough to merit government measurement.
The reasons grandparents take over for parents are many, experts
say. They include parental substance abuse, illness, death, abuse,
neglect, economic hardship, incarceration, divorce and domestic
violence.
New Citations from
NCOFF's FatherLit Database
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