A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

25. Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys. By D. B. Rubin. ISBN 0 471 08705 X. Wiley, Chichester, 1987. 258 pp. £30.25.

Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys

This chapter explores the ecology of human development, those forces in the person's environment that affect and influence development. Urie Bronfenbrenner's model of the human ecosystem guides the discussion, making connections between children in families and in communities and the larger society that surrounds them. The human ecosystem model is much like the study of the natural ecology, focusing on the interactions between subjects at various levels of the environment as they affect each other. The interaction between individual and environment forms the basis of an ecological approach to human development. This view sees the process of development as the expansion of the child's conception of the world and the child's ability to act on that world. Risks to development can come from both direct threats and the absence of opportunities for development. Sociocultural risk refers to the impoverishment in the child's world of essential experiences and relationships.

The Ecology of Human Development

Childhood multiple risk factor exposure exceeds the adverse developmental impacts of singular exposures. Multiple risk factor exposure may also explain why sociodemographic variables (e.g., poverty) can have adverse consequences. Most research on multiple risk factor exposure has relied upon cumulative risk (CR) as the measure of multiple risk. CR is constructed by dichotomizing each risk factor exposure (0 = no risk; 1 = risk) and then summing the dichotomous scores. Despite its widespread use in developmental psychology and elsewhere, CR has several shortcomings: Risk is designated arbitrarily; data on risk intensity are lost; and the index is additive, precluding the possibility of statistical interactions between risk factors. On the other hand, theoretically more compelling multiple risk metrics prove untenable because of low statistical power, extreme higher order interaction terms, low robustness, and collinearity among risk factors. CR multiple risk metrics are parsimonious, are statistically sensitive even with small samples, and make no assumptions about the relative strengths of multiple risk factors or their collinearity. CR also fits well with underlying theoretical models (e.g., Bronfenbrenner's, 1979, bioecological model; McEwen's, 1998, allostasis model of chronic stress; and Ellis, Figueredo, Brumbach, & Schlomer's, 2009, developmental evolutionary theory) concerning why multiple risk factor exposure is more harmful than singular risk exposure. We review the child CR literature, comparing CR to alternative multiple risk measurement models. We also discuss strengths and weaknesses of developmental CR research, offering analytic and theoretical suggestions to strengthen this growing area of scholarship. Finally, we highlight intervention and policy implications of CR and child development research and theory.

Cumulative risk and child development.

All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community. C. B. Stack. New York: Harper & Row. 1974. Carol Stack wrote one of the most powerful books of the last half century about African American families. The book's power derived from its focus on the stories and the lives of persons who were struggling to manage with limited resources and who had evolved seamless methods of survival and coping strategies. Stack was not content to view the problems of impoverished African American families from an outside perspective, as had been done in the past, but chose instead to present her work from the view of the participants. She presented a sensitive view of families that has not been duplicated to this day. Stack put specific emphasis on being accepted by the families before she began interviewing them. She and her son took a long time to be accepted by the families as they gradually became participants in the day-to-day lives of the "Flats." She was sensitive to the patterns of interactions among the networks of family and friends that would have been overlooked by almost any other researcher or method of observation. The book showed how a person from another racial and economic group was able, with skill, to become an intimate part of the experience and the lives of very poor families. Her anthropological approach stands in sharp contrast to the countless attempts of others to quickly go in and pull out slices of families' lives with a preexisting conceptual framework. The African American families of the Flats were presented as they were, not from a White academic theoretical perspective that was not based on reality. Stack made many observations that allowed one to see the intricate workings of the families that "outsiders" had not been documented before. Participants were allowed to make observations about their own families' patterns of interaction and to uncover truths of family functioning based on the reality of their lives. Important data on these second-generation urban dwellers are presented in such a calm manner that one could overlook their significance to the field. The impact of the economic pressures on the men and women in the African American community show how persons can have mainstream values but are prevented from achieving them because of the lack of employment and economic security within the community. In response to the reality, Stack found that African Americans have cooperated to produce an adaptive strategy of exchanging goods and trading resources, as well as offering child care or temporary fosterage. Kinship boundaries were more elastic than they were in more affluent families because these individuals immersed themselves in a domestic network of kinfolk and fictive kin, or those who became as kin. The participants in Stack's study moved around and had loyalties to more than one household grouping at a time, making their family networks unlike the "household" structures of most American families. These networks were diffused over several kin-based households that changed frequently. The usual method of arbitrarily specifying widely accepted definitions of the family as nuclear or matrilocal may block one from seeing the world as it exists in very poor communities. Stack's observations refuted the "culture of poverty" position that had seen African Americans as having no culture or totally negative qualities of family disorganization, personal disorganization, and fatalism. Unfortunately, too many current writings on African Americans still take these same positions. The views may be the result of ignorance, naivete, or complex levels of racism that insidiously make their way into present family literature. Stack continued to reflect on the poverty of the participants' situations. By doing so, she avoided another position that is all too common-assumption that all African American families are the same, regardless of their levels of poverty or affluence. …

All Our Kin: Strategies for Survival in a Black Community

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 has changed American society in ways that are difficult to capture in a timely manner. With this study, we take advantage of daily survey data collected before and after the crisis started to investigate the hypothesis that the crisis has worsened parents’ and children’s psychological well-being. We also examine the extent of crisis-related hardships and evaluate the hypothesis that the accumulation of hardships will be associated with parent and child psychological well-being. METHODS: Daily survey data were collected between February 20 and April 27, 2020, from hourly service workers with a young child (aged 2–7) in a large US city (N = 8222 person-days from 645 individuals). A subsample completed a one-time survey about the effects of the crisis fielded between March 23 and April 26 (subsample n = 561). RESULTS: Ordered probit models revealed that the frequency of parent-reported daily negative mood increased significantly since the start of the crisis. Many families have experienced hardships during the crisis, including job loss, income loss, caregiving burden, and illness. Both parents’ and children’s well-being in the postcrisis period was strongly associated with the number of crisis-related hardships that the family experienced. CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with our hypotheses, in families that have experienced multiple hardships related to the coronavirus disease 2019 crisis, both parents’ and children’s mental health is worse. As the crisis continues to unfold, pediatricians should screen for mental health, with particular attention to children whose families are especially vulnerable to economic and disease aspects of the crisis.

https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2020/08/04/peds.2020-007294.full.pdf

COVID-19 and Parent-Child Psychological Well-being.

Using North Carolina data for the period 1990–2010, we estimate the effects of economic downturns on the birthrates of 15- to 19-year-olds, using county-level business closings and layoffs as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in the strength of the local economy. We find little effect of job losses on the white teen birthrate. For black teens, however, job losses to 1 % of the working-age population decrease the birthrate by around 2 %. Birth declines start five months after the job loss and then last for more than one year. Linking the timing of job losses and conceptions suggests that black teen births decline because of increased terminations and perhaps also because of changes in prepregnancy behaviors. National data on risk behaviors also provide evidence that black teens reduce sexual activity and increase contraception use in response to job losses. Job losses seven to nine months after conception do not affect teen birthrates, indicating that teens do not anticipate job losses and lending confidence that job losses are “shocks” that can be viewed as quasi-experimental variation. We also find evidence that relatively advantaged black teens disproportionately abort after job losses, implying that the average child born to a black teen in the wake of job loss is relatively more disadvantaged.

/pdf/community-wide-job-loss-and-teenage-fertility-evidence-from-5bgn5kbuuv.pdf

Community-Wide Job Loss and Teenage Fertility: Evidence From North Carolina

This study investigated low-income mothers' daily nighttime and weekend work and family outcomes. Sixty-one mothers of preschool-aged children reported daily on work hours, mood, mother-child interaction, and child behavior for two weeks (N = 724 person-days). Although nighttime and weekend work are both nonstandard schedules, results showed adverse associations of working nighttime hours on family outcomes-more negative mood and mother-child interactions; less positive child behavior-but no relationship between weekend work and family outcomes. Key Words: low-income families, parent-child relationships, work and families, working mothers. In the last half century, the number of women participating in the labor force in the United States has increased dramatically, with particular increases among low-income women (Blank, 2002). At the same time, the nature of work in the United States has evolved. Service and sales sectors have expanded, and the economy increasingly operates around the clock, amplifying demand for workers outside the traditional 9-to-5 workday (Presser, 2003). It is now common for individuals to work nonstandard schedules - in the evening, nights, or on weekends - leading to concerns about the effects of work scheduling on families and children. Nonstandard work is more common among lower-income individuals (Presser), and so children in low-income families are more likely to be affected by their parents' nonstandard work schedules. Research on the effects of nonstandard work schedules on both workers and their families has generally found that nonstandard work schedules have negative effects, particularly in studies of mixed- and higher-income families (Han, 2005, 2006; Han & Waldfogel, 2007; Strazdins, Clements, Korda, Broom, & D'Souza, 2006; Strazdins, Korda, Lim, Broom, & D'Souza, 2004). Studies focused on low-wage workers, however, have produced mixed results (Han, 2008; Hsueh & Yoshikawa, 2007; Joshi & Bogen, 2007; Phillips, 2002), and additional information is still needed about how mothers' nonstandard work schedules affect low-income families. Prior research has commonly compared parents categorized as working standard or nonstandard schedules, on the basis of a typical work week. That design has three limitations: unobserved selection into different schedules may bias results; "standard" and "nonstandard" categories may mask withinperson variability in work schedules; and, in most studies, the "nonstandard" category includes both nights and weekends, although their consequences may differ. This study addressed a number of limitations in the literature on work during nonstandard schedules. First, it focused on an understudied group, low-wage workers with preschool-age children. Second, it collected daily reports from low-income working mothers over a period of two weeks regarding work schedules, maternal mood, mother-child interaction, and child behavior. Rather than comparing workers who have been grouped into static work schedule categories, the design of this study allowed for the examination of within-family variability in work schedules. Thus, the results presented here more rigorously address the selection problem that has plagued studies of nonstandard work schedules. Finally, this study considered the effects of different types of nonstandard schedules - nighttime work and weekend work - separately. NONSTANDARD WORK SCHEDULES IN LOW-INCOME FAMILIES Although researchers' exact definitions of nonstandard work schedules differ, most agree that nonstandard work includes evenings, nights, or weekends, and on rotating or irregular shifts (Presser, 2003). Standard schedules are defined as fixed daytime hours, Monday to Friday. Work during nonstandard schedules is increasingly common. Across income levels, 29% of working mothers worked nonstandard schedules in 2004 (McMenamin, 2007). That rate is even higher in the services and hospitality industries, which employ high numbers of low- wage workers. …

Low-Income Mothers' Nighttime and Weekend Work: Daily Associations With Child Behavior, Mother-Child Interactions, and Mood

The authors examined the effects of antipoverty programs on children's cumulative poverty-related risk and the relationship between cumulative poverty-related risk and child outcomes among low-income families. Samples included 419 children ages 3-10 years in the New Hope program and 759 children ages 2-9 years in the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP), which tested 2 program approaches. Nine poverty-related risks made up the measure of cumulative risk. Both MFIP program approaches reduced cumulative poverty-related risk. New Hope reduced cumulative poverty-related risk among long-term welfare recipients. In both New Hope and MFIP, significant linear relationships between cumulative poverty-related risk and parent-reported behavior problems and school achievement were found. Cumulative poverty-related risk partially mediated the impacts of the MFIP programs on children's behavior problems. Among long-term welfare recipients, cumulative poverty-related risk partially mediated New Hope's impact on parent-reported school achievement.

The effects of antipoverty programs on children's cumulative level of poverty-related risk.

Adolescents in the United States live amid high levels of concentrated poverty and increasing income inequality. Poverty is robustly linked to adolescents' mental health problems; however, less is known about how perceptions of their social status and exposure to local area income inequality relate to mental health. Participants consisted of a population-representative sample of over 2,100 adolescents (ages 10-16), 395 of whom completed a 14-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study. Participants' subjective social status (SSS) was assessed at the start of the EMA, and mental health symptoms were measured both at baseline for the entire sample and daily in the EMA sample. Adolescents' SSS tracked family, school, and neighborhood economic indicators (|r| ranging from .12 to .30), and associations did not differ by age, race, or gender. SSS was independently associated with mental health, with stronger associations among older (ages 14-16) versus younger (ages 10-13) adolescents. Adolescents with lower SSS reported higher psychological distress and inattention problems, as well as more conduct problems, in daily life. Those living in areas with higher income inequality reported significantly lower subjective social status, but this association was explained by family and neighborhood income. Findings illustrate that adolescents' SSS is correlated with both internalizing and externalizing mental health problems, and that by age 14 it becomes a unique predictor of mental health problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Anna Gassman-Pines

Papers

COVID-19 and Parent-Child Psychological Well-being.

Community-Wide Job Loss and Teenage Fertility: Evidence From North Carolina

Low-Income Mothers' Nighttime and Weekend Work: Daily Associations With Child Behavior, Mother-Child Interactions, and Mood

The effects of antipoverty programs on children's cumulative level of poverty-related risk.

Perceived social status and mental health among young adolescents: Evidence from census data to cellphones