Showing papers by "Jeanne Brooks-Gunn published in 2001"
TL;DR: This paper investigated the long-term impact of early maternal employment on children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes and found that maternal employment in the Ist year of a child's life has significant negative effects on White children cognitive outcomes.
Abstract: This article investigates the long-term impact of early maternal employment on children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes. Non-Hispanic White and African American children aged 3 to 4 in the 1986 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth were followed longitudinally to see whether the effects that prior studies found at age 3 to 4 persist into the school-age years (ages 7 to 8) or whether those effects attenuate over time. The empirical results indicate that maternal employment in the Ist year of a child's life has significant negative effects on White children's cognitive outcomes. These effects persist to ages 7 or 8 for some children but not for others. We also found some negative effects of maternal employment in the 1st year on behavioral problems as assessed at age 7 or 8, but again these effects are found only for White children. Key Words: behavioral outcomes, child's cognitive outcomes, early maternal employment. Recent trends in labor force participation have given new urgency to understanding the effects of early maternal employment-employment begun in the child's Ist year of life-on child outcomes. Women with infants have had the fastest growth in labor force participation of any group in the United States (Committee on Ways and Means, 1998). With welfare reform, even more mothers will be working in the labor market before their child's first birthday. These trends are of potential concern given prior research that has found negative effects of early maternal employment on outcomes for children. Several studies have used data from the 1986 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to investigate the effects of maternal employment in the Ist year on children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes as assessed at ages 3 or 4. In this article, we revisit these same children 2 and 4 years later, when they are aged 5 and 6 and aged 7 and 8, to see whether the effects that earlier studies found at ages 3 and 4 would persist. We also wanted to better understand what might cause these effects and how they might be moderated. With one exception, all the NLSY studies to date have analyzed children at young ages or at one point in time (Baydar & Brooks-Gunn, 1991; Belsky & Eggebeen, 1991; Blau & Grossberg, 1992; Desai, Chase-Lansdale, & Michael, 1989; Greenstein, 1995; Parcel & Menaghan, 1994; Vandell & Ramanan, 1992). In a recent study, Harvey (1999) analyzed all the children in the NLSY born in 1980 or later. Her study is exceptional in that it assesses some outcomes as late as age 12 and at several different points in time. Unlike our study, however, Harvey's was not longitudinal in design. In our study, we follow one group of children from ages 3 and 4, to ages 5 and 6, and to ages 7 and 8. We are thus able to show whether the effects that many studies have found at a point in time persist over time or whether they attenuate. Another point of difference between our study and Harvey's is that she analyzes White, African American, and Hispanic children together. If there are important differences in the effects of early maternal employment across racial and ethnic groups, as some prior research has found and as we have found here, then analyzing children separately, is likely to yield more accurate estimates. Research on maternal employment and child outcomes has been conducted within several theoretical frameworks. The first is attachment theory, which posits that children whose mothers are absent during critical periods of early child development are less likely to develop secure attachments with their mothers (Ainsworth, 1964; Bowlby, 1969). Attachment theory had in mind extended round-the-clock separations due to hospitalizations, illness, incarceration, and so on, and debate continues about whether maternal employment in the Ist year of life constitutes a comparable absence (Belsky, 1988; Belsky & Eggebeen, 1991; Clarke-Stewart, 1989). Early studies conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, for the most part with small samples of primarily middle-class White children, found some evidence that maternal employment in Ist year is associated with insecure attachment (Belsky; Clarke-Stewart; Haskins, 1985; Schwartz, 1983), but the effects were small. …
309 citations
TL;DR: Britto et al. as mentioned in this paper examined the relationship between shared book reading and children's vocabulary, and parent's storybook reading is contrasted with their teaching of literacy to determine the respective influence of each activity on children's emerging literacy skills.
Abstract: EDITORS' NOTES (Pia Rebello Britto, Jeanne Brooks--Gunn). 1. Emergent Literacy Is Emerging Knowledge of Written, Not Oral, Language (Victoria Purcell--Gates). Children's knowledge of the development of written, as opposed to oral, language is central to the concept of emergent literacy. 2. Parent--Child Interaction in Three Conversational Contexts: Variations in Style and Strategy (Catherine Crain--Thoreson, Michael P. Dahlin, Terris A. Powell). The associations between parent language complexity and conversational style and child language use are examined across three contexts--storybook reading, free play with toys, and joint remembering of an event. 3. Storybook Reading and Parent Teaching: Links to Language and Literacy Development (Monique Senechal, Jo--Anne LeFevre). In this chapter the strong links between shared book reading and children's vocabulary are demonstrated, and parent's storybook reading is contrasted with their teaching of literacy to determine the respective influence of each activity on children's emerging literacy skills. 4. The Role of Family and Home in the Literacy Development of Children from Low--Income Backgrounds (Stacey A. Storch, Grover J. Whitehurst). The longitudinal effect of home influences on a range of children's emerging literacy skills is examined in a sample of low--income preschool-- and elementary school--age children. 5. Beyond Shared Book Reading: Dimensions of Home Literacy and Low--Income African American Preschoolers' Skills (Pia Rebello Britto, Jeanne Brooks--Gunn). In this chapter family literacy environments and their association with young children's emerging literacy skills are examined from a multi--dimensional perspective. 6. Concluding Comments (Pia Rebello Britto, Jeanne Brooks--Gunn). New directions in the understanding of family literacy environments and children's emerging literacy are discussed. Also presented are implications of these new directions for research and practice. INDEX.
105 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of adolescent employment were investigated in a sample of 251 low-income, African American youth that were followed since birth.
Abstract: The antecedents, correlates, and consequences of adolescent employment were investigated in a sample of 251 low-income, African American youth that were followed since birth. The youth (age: M at preschool = 4.89, SD= .70; M at adolescence = 16.44, SD= .66; M at transition to adulthood = 19.36, SD= .76; and M at early adulthood = 27.67, SD= .75) were the firstborn children of African American teenage mothers who gave birth in Baltimore in the 1960s. Analyses examined the antecedents and correlates of age of entry into employment and stability of employment during adolescence. The associations of adolescent work experiences with subsequent adult education and employment outcomes also were considered. Findings indicate that among this sample of low-income, African American youth, those who repeated a grade in school during middle childhood were more likely to enter the workforce at later ages than their peers who did not repeat a grade. The small subset of adolescents who never worked (n= 12) appear to be markedly more disadvantaged than their peers who worked. At the transition to adulthood, adolescents who entered the workforce earlier were more likely to complete high school than their peers. In addition, stable employment during the adolescent years had more beneficial effects on young men's chances of attending college than young women's postsecondary education. This pattern of findings is consistent with ethnographic accounts of adolescent employment among poor, minority, urban youth.
99 citations
TL;DR: Although employment is associated with better mental health for poor mothers, entry into the workforce is associatedwith stronger links between financial strain, parenting stress and depressive affect for mothers leaving welfare.
Abstract: Using a sample of 188 low-income single black mothers (93 employed and 95 nonemployed), this study investigated financial strain, maternal depressive affect, and parenting stress among former welfare recipients who are now working, and current welfare recipients who are not employed. The findings suggested that being employed did not reduce financial strain, as the two groups reported similar levels of strain. However, regression analyses indicated that not being employed was associated with reporting higher levels of stress. Parenting stress was also associated with attaining less education, having boys, reporting more financial strain and depressive affect. Correlates of maternal depressive affect were mother's education and financial strain. Interaction effects were found for employment by financial strain, indicating that higher levels of depressive affect were related to more financial strain among nonemployed mothers. The findings suggest that although employment is associated with better mental health for poor mothers, entry into the workforce is associated with stronger links between financial strain, parenting stress and depressive affect for mothers leaving welfare.
89 citations
TL;DR: This chapter examines the associations between individual dimensions of the home literacy environment and specific emergent literacy skills in low-income preschoolers.
Abstract: This chapter examines the associations between individual dimensions of the home literacy environment and specific emergent literacy skills in low-income preschoolers.
78 citations
TL;DR: Strong negative associations were found between receiving welfare and parenting behavior and child outcomes at age 3 years and the parenting behavior of mothers who had left welfare by their child's third birthday was more likely to be authoritarian if she had left public assistance without also leaving poverty.
Abstract: The goal of current national and state legislation on welfare reform is to decrease the number of people who are dependent on public assistance, most of whom are mothers and their young children Mothers' patterns of welfare receipt in the 3 years following the birth of a child were examined vis-a-vis their associations with maternal emotional distress (General Health Questionnaire), provision of learning experiences (Home Observation of the Measurement of the Environment), parenting behavior, and the child's cognitive test score (Stanford-Binet) in the third year of life The data set was the Infant Health and Development Program, an eight-site randomized clinical trial designed to test the efficacy of educational and family support services in reducing developmental delays in low-birthweight, preterm infants (N = 833) Strong negative associations were found between receiving welfare and parenting behavior and child outcomes at age 3 years Outcomes varied depending on when the mother received public assistance (earlier or later in her child's first 3 years) and family poverty status on leaving welfare The parenting behavior of mothers who had left welfare by their child's third birthday was more likely to be authoritarian if she had left public assistance without also leaving poverty Implications of these findings for the well-being of children in low-income families are discussed
66 citations
TL;DR: The intervention reduced maternal distress, especially for women with less than a high school education, and was more effective for children whose mothers had fewer life events.
Abstract: Several questions were examined with Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) data (N = 843). Are effects of intervention services found for maternal emotional distress and coping strategies, and are these effects different for different groups of mothers? Do maternal distress, coping, and life events moderate (or mediate) the intervention effects reported earlier for children's test scores and behavior problems (IHDP, 1990)? The intervention reduced maternal distress, especially for women with less than a high school education. Maternal distress did not moderate or mediate the influence of the intervention on child outcomes. Maternal coping was not influenced by the intervention and did not moderate the influence of the intervention on child outcomes. Life events moderated the influence of the intervention on children's test scores; the intervention was more effective for children whose mothers had fewer life events.
47 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that keeping a clean and organized home reflects an overall ability and desire to maintain a sense of order in a wide range of life activities, and that children raised in more organized households may be more successful in school and work.
Abstract: The inability of formal skills such as schooling and on-the-job training to account for most of the valiation in adult labor-market success has spurred investigations of other factors. Cognitive ability, as measured by IQ-type tests such as the Armed Forces Qualifying Test has received the bulk of this attention. The consensus from research by economists and sociologists is that cognitive ability plays a significant although far from overwhelming role as a determinant of adult success (e.g., Christopher Jencks, 1979; John Cawley et al., 1997). Cognitive skills do not appear to account for more than about one-fifth of the association between completed schooling and earnings (Samuel Bowles et al., 2000). Similar magnitudes emerge in studies examining the strength of parents' cognitive ability as a predictor of the intergenerational success of their children (Meredith Phillips et al., 1998). The search for key "noncognitive" factors important in predicting both intraand intergenerational success has been wide-ranging. Jencks (1979) demonstrates that, net of background, formal schooling, and cognitive skills, personal traits such as industriousness, perseverance, and leadership have noteworthy associations with subsequent earnings and occupational status. Measures of social-psychological constructs such as "locus of control" (Julian Rotter, 1966) and "self-esteem" (Morris Rosenberg, 1965) have been shown to be predictive of subsequent labor-market success in some cases (e.g., Rachel Dunifon and Duncan, 1998; Arthur Goldsmith et al., 2000). Our focus in this paper is on the role of a different kind of personal characteristic: organization and efficiency, as operationalized in our data set by the housework-hours-adjusted score from five annual interviewer assessments of the cleanliness of a respondent's dwelling at the time of the interview. We argue that keeping a clean and organized home reflects an overall ability and desire to maintain a sense of order in a wide range of life activities. People whose homes appear "clean" both value order and demonstrate the ability to impose a degree of order at home. It is likely that people who are able to maintain such homes carry over the ability and desire to be organized to other aspects of their lives, such as work and parenting. The ability to maintain a degree of organization may be a skill that would command a reward in the labor market. Additionally, children raised in more organized households may be more successful in school and work. The results presented here indicate that, net of socioeconomic-status background, cognitive ability, completed schooling, housework time, and a host of other factors, the cleanliness rating of one's home is predictive of: (i) one's own earnings 25 years later; (ii) children's subsequent completed schooling; and (iii) children's earnings measured 25 years later. These results suggest the utility of continuing the search for "noncognitive" factors in intraand intergenerational models of schooling and labor-market success.
46 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focused on the well-being and capacities of 1759 new fathers in seven cities using data from the Fragile Families Study and found that married fathers are more advantaged than unmarried fathers vis-a-vis education, income and age; they also are in better physical and mental health.
39 citations
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TL;DR: This article found that 2-year-olds perform significantly better on a range of measures of cognitive, language, and social-emotional development, when compared with a randomly assigned control group.
Abstract: Finds that, a year or more after enrolling in the program, 2-year-olds perform significantly better on a range of measures of cognitive, language, and social-emotional development, when compared with a randomly assigned control group. EHS families are also more likely to attend school or job training and have less parenting stress and family conflict. The program produced significant impacts for important groups, including welfare families, working families, and families headed by teenage mothers. For these families, EHS programs appear to have provided a foundation of support for parenting and child development while families coped with new work requirements and time limits on TANF cash assistance, balanced the demands of work and family, or attended to their own developmental needs.
38 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a developmental framework for the coming century is proposed, which considers the processes through which neighborhood effects might operate on child well-being, as well as neighborhood contexts per se as dynamic rather than static.
TL;DR: The proposition that welfare and work may be complementary rather than opposing strategies, in terms of putting together a family income package, is discussed.
Abstract: SUMMARY One goal of recent welfare reform legislation is to move welfare-dependent mothers with young children into the paid labor force. However, prior to the new legislation, many welfare-dependent women were already engaged in employment activities. In this paper we examine whether child or maternal well-being is influenced by a mother's strategy of combining work and public assistance receipt in the late 1980s. Measures of well-being include children's cognitive test scores and behavior problems, parenting behavior, and maternal mental health, social support, and coping strategies collected when children were 2 ½ to 3 years of age. Data from the Infant Health and Development Program (a sample of low birthweight, premature infants born in 8 sites in 1985) were used to identify low-income families (incomes under 200% of the poverty threshold; N = 525). Comparisons were made among mothers in the following groups: (a) Work Only, (b) Some Work-Some Welfare, (c) Some Work-No Welfare, (d) No Work-No Welfare,...
TL;DR: Analyses suggest that girls with depressive problems (with and without co-occurring eating problems) experience impairments in peer and family relationships; girls with high scores on both problems have poor adjustment across several domains.
Abstract: Objective
This paper examines prospectively the co-occurrence of eating and depressive problems in 105 White girls who were seen at three times from young adolescence to young adulthood.
Method
Girls were from middle to upper-middle class families. Co-occurrence of eating and depressive problems was determined cross-sectionally from questionnaire data using established criteria for identifying subclinical problems.
Results
The rate of depressive problems declines across middle to late adolescence while the rate of eating problems is fairly constant across all three times of assessment. Analyses suggest that girls with depressive problems (with and without co-occurring eating problems) experience impairments in peer and family relationships; girls with high scores on both problems have poor adjustment across several domains.
Discussion
The additional psychological strains seen with co-occurrence of eating and depressive problems heighten physical and mental health concomitants of both problems across adolescence. © 2001 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J Eat Disord 30: 37–47, 2001.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors synthesize developmental science and current understanding of comprehensive community initiatives to suggest a number of ways for CCIs to increase their emphasis on early development, especially with respect to the ill effects of early childhood poverty.
Abstract: Recent advances in developmental psychology, social services, and social policy have converged to highlight 3 issues: (a) the importance of early development; (b) the importance of the contexts, or "ecology," of early development, especially with respect to the ill effects of early childhood poverty; and (c) the promise of intervention programs for low-income children, families, and communities, including comprehensive community initiatives (CCIs). CCIs, however, generally have not focused on young children. In this article, we synthesize developmental science and current understanding of CCIs to suggest a number of ways for CCIs to increase their emphasis on early development. We begin with a review of developmental research that illustrates the effects of community characteristics on children's development. We then review the goals, strategies, and principles of CCIs. These reviews illustrate that despite overlapping emphases, developmental science and CCIs could be linked more generatively. We propose ...
01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: In this paper, a growing body of research indicates that poverty has negative short-term and long-term influences on children's physical, cognitive, and emotional development, and public policy can target family resources directly or the mechanisms through which poverty operates on child health and well-being.
Abstract: Living at or below a poverty threshold signifies that a family lacks basic financial resources, and thus children may lack access to necessary resources including food, shelter, and health care. Large international discrepancies are seen in child poverty rates; however, these rates depend upon the type of measure used, demographic differences across countries, and government policies. A growing body of research indicates that poverty has negative short-term and long-term influences on children's physical, cognitive, and emotional development. The timing, depth, and duration of poverty are also important; deep and persistent poverty during early childhood are especially detrimental to child well-being. Researchers are beginning to explore the potential pathways through which poverty transmits its deleterious effects to children's development including the home environment, child care and schools, parenting behavior, parental mental health, neighborhoods, health care, and exposure to violence. There is increasing evidence that the home environment and parental behavior are the primary mechanisms of influence. Public policy can target family resources directly or the mechanisms through which poverty operates on child health and well-being. Policies that coordinate the needs of both children and their parents are likely to be more efficacious than those that focus solely on one or the other.
TL;DR: This paper explored the implications of the rapid influx of low-income mothers into the workforce and PRWORA work requirements during the middle to late 1990s for the well-being of young children.
TL;DR: Application of the progesterone gel caused no significant change in HSCL total scores or individual symptom scores for somatization, obsession-compulsion, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, and anxiety, and natural vaginal progestersone gel can be an effective alternative to oral progester one for women on HRT.
Abstract: The objective of this study was to evaluate the psychological side effects of a transvaginal natural progesterone gel in hormone replacement therapy (HRT). This 3-month preliminary study was part of a multicenter study previously performed in our center. We enrolled 49 women (ages 18-45 years) with hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA) (n = 40) and premature ovarian failure (POF) (n = 9). Estrogenized patients applied vaginal progesterone gel (4% or 8%) every other day for six doses per month. The Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL), a psychometric profile test, was administered at baseline, day 13 of cycle 2, day 24 of cycle 2, and day 24 of cycle 3. Application of the progesterone gel caused no significant change in HSCL total scores or individual symptom scores for somatization, obsession-compulsion, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, and anxiety. Natural vaginal progesterone gel can be an effective alternative to oral progesterone for women on HRT.