Showing papers by "Jeanne Brooks-Gunn published in 2016"

Evaluating youth development programs: Progress and promise

Abstract: Advances in theories of adolescent development and positive youth development have greatly increased our understanding of how programs and practices with adolescents can impede or enhance their development. In this paper the authors reflect on the progress in research on youth development programs in the last two decades, since possibly the first review of empirical evaluations by Roth, Brooks-Gunn, Murray, and Foster (1998). The authors use the terms Version 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 to refer to changes in youth development research and programs over time. They argue that advances in theory and descriptive accounts of youth development programs (Version 2.0) need to be coupled with progress in definitions of youth development programs, measurement of inputs and outputs that incorporate an understanding of programs as contexts for development, and stronger design and evaluation of programs (Version 3.0). The authors also advocate for an integration of prevention and promotion research, and for use of the term youth development rather than positive youth development.

When Does Preschool Matter

Abstract: We have many reasons to invest in preschool programs, including persistent gaps in school readiness between children from poorer and wealthier families, large increases in maternal employment over the past several decades, and the rapid brain development that preschoolage children experience. But what do we know about preschool education’s effectiveness?In this article, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, Christina Weiland, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn report strong evidence that preschool boosts children’s language, literacy, and math skills in the short term; it may also reduce problem behaviors such as aggression. Over the elementary school years, however, test scores of children who were exposed to preschool tend to converge with the scores of children who were not. Many factors may explain this convergence. For example, kindergarten or first-grade teachers may focus on helping children with lower levels of skills get up to speed, or children may lose ground when they transition from high-quality preschools into poor-quality elementary programs. Taking a longer view, some studies have found that attending preschool boosts children’s high school graduation rates and makes them less likely to engage in criminal behavior. Overall, higherquality preschool programs are associated with larger effects.How might preschools produce larger effects that last longer? Developmentally focused curricula, combined with intensive in-service training or coaching for teachers, have been shown to improve the quality of preschool instruction. Focusing on fundamental skills that both predict long-term outcomes and are less likely to be gained in the first years of school might also produce longer-lasting effects. And improving instructional quality in early elementary school and better aligning the preschool and elementary curricula may be another way to sustain the boost that quality preschool education can provide. Above all, the authors write, if we want to see sustained improvements in children’s development and learning, we need to increase the quality of—not just access to—preschool education.

Cohesive Neighborhoods Where Social Expectations Are Shared May Have Positive Impact On Adolescent Mental Health

Abstract: Adolescent mental health problems are associated with poor health and well-being in adulthood. We used data from a cohort of 2,264 children born in large US cities in 1998–2000 to examine whether n...

Residential Instability, Family Support, and Parent–Child Relationships Among Ethnically Diverse Urban Families

Abstract: From a social disorganization standpoint, neighborhood residential instability potentially brings negative consequences to parent-child relationship qualities, but family social support and racial/ethnic identity may modify this association. Using data (n = 3,116) from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, this study examines associations between neighborhood residential instability and parent-child warmth and conflict, whether family social support moderates associations between residential instability and parent-child relationships, and variation by race/ethnicity. Multilevel models reveal that residential instability undermines parent-child relationship qualities, particularly for non-White individuals. Family support is a protective factor for families in less stable neighborhoods, and specifically buffers the association between neighborhood residential instability and reduced parent-child warmth. Among Hispanics, family support mitigates the association between residential instability and heightened parent-child conflict. Findings highlight residential instability as a detriment to parent-child relationships; families in unstable neighborhoods may benefit from family social support.

Early-life experiences and telomere length in adult rhesus monkeys: An exploratory study

Abstract: OBJECTIVE Child-rearing environments have been associated with morbidity in adult rhesus monkeys. We examine whether such links are also seen with leukocyte telomere length. METHODS To determine telomere length in leukocytes, blood was collected from 11 adult female monkeys aged 7 to 10 years who had been exposed to different rearing environments between birth and 7 months. Four had been reared with their mothers in typical social groups composed of other female monkeys, their offspring, and 1 to 2 adult male monkeys. The other 7 had been reared in either small groups of peers or individual cages with extensive peer interaction daily. After 7 months, all shared a common environment. RESULTS Telomere lengths were longer for those adults who had been reared with their mothers in social groups (median = 16.0 kb, interquartile range = 16.5-15.4) than for those who were reared without their mothers (median = 14.0 kb, interquartile range = 14.3-12.7; 2.2 kb/telomere difference, p < .027). CONCLUSIONS This observation adds to emerging knowledge about early adverse child-rearing conditions and their potential for influencing later morbidity. Because newborns were randomly assigned to the mother or other rearing conditions, the findings are not confounded by other conditions that co-occur with adverse child-rearing environments in humans (e.g., prenatal stress, nutrition and health as well as postnatal nutrition and negative life experiences over and above rearing conditions).

Starting Early: Introducing the Issue

Abstract: In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Starting Early: Introducing the Issue Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (bio), Lisa Markman-Pithers (bio), and Cecilia Elena Rouse (bio) Across the nation, more and more people want to see children receive quality education before kindergarten. Public opinion polls suggest that 70 percent of adults favor such programs, partly because of the irresistible idea that “starting early,” and ensuring that children arrive in school ready to learn, is the best way to generate happy, healthy, and productive adults.1 The notion of starting early resonates. Head Start, the federally funded prekindergarten program for children from low-income homes, was a cornerstone of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. Even then it was believed that students can’t fully benefit from an elementary education if they don’t arrive at kindergarten ready to learn. Presidents with views as disparate as those of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have called for strengthening early childhood education in their budgets and State of the Union addresses. One reason for the strong support of early childhood education is the seemingly compelling evidence that exposing children to educational experiences when they’re young can have profound effects on later educational, social, and adult outcomes. In fact, as Lynn Karoly points out in this issue, estimates based on some older pre-K programs suggest that every dollar invested in prekindergarten pays off $3 to $17 in terms of benefits, both to the adult individual and to society. That suggests prekindergarten is one of the most effective investments that we can make in children. Indeed, James Heckman of the University of Chicago, a Nobel laureate in economics, has argued that investments made in early childhood are more beneficial and also more cost-effective than those made in later childhood and adolescence.2 The idea that prekindergarten can enhance later learning and adult success is based on the premise that if pre-K programs provide enriching activities more intensively and more intentionally than parents can, then those programs have the potential to boost children’s learning and skill acquisition. In brief, quality pre-K experiences can teach [End Page 3] children the skills that make it easier for them to learn new skills in early elementary school: that is, skills beget skills. Differences in literacy and cognitive skills between children in low-income families and their better-off counterparts are already apparent by age three, or perhaps even earlier.3 The pre-K education programs initiated in the 1960s and 1970s were designed to reduce those gaps by providing quality pre-K education to disadvantaged children, who were less likely to be ready for school. Few pre-K programs existed in the low-income neighborhoods where most disadvantaged children lived, and parents with little income and education were therefore less likely to send their children to prekindergarten than were parents with more resources. And when disadvantaged parents were able to find a pre-K program, it was likely to be of relatively low quality.4 Based on these observations, we would expect that children from disadvantaged environments would benefit the most from pre-K education; that high-quality programs would deliver the greatest benefits; and that children who received such education would benefit more than those who remained at home, cared for by parents, family, and friends. Comparisons between different pre-K programs, on the other hand, shouldn’t show such a stark contrast. These assumptions imply that not all programs would show equal benefits in empirical evaluations. Scholars have called this heterogeneity in outcomes. Interpreting the research requires attention to many factors—family background, comparison group composition, and programs’ quality and intensity. Scholars have extensively studied the efficacy of pre-K programs, especially those offered to four-year-olds. Of more than 100 evaluations of pre-K programs, the vast majority used random assignment of children to receive the preschool treatment or not.5 Most of these experimental programs served children from low-resource families, in keeping with the premise that these children were less likely to have the skills needed for kindergarten and were therefore most likely to benefit. Consequently, we know the most about how preschool influences children from disadvantaged backgrounds. And because many of these...

Maternal labor force participation and differences by education in an urban birth cohort study - 1998-2010.

Abstract: 1. IntroductionMaternal employment in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the last 40 years. Among mothers with children under 18, 47% were in the labor force in 1975 and this figure increased to more than 70% in the late 1990s, where it has remained over the last 15 years (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2009, 2014). Maternal labor force participation, employment intensity, and type of participation (non-standard work, multiple jobholding) are not only linked with economic wellbeing, but also with parenting, child care, and the home environment, all of which impact the wellbeing of families. Despite these changes in maternal labor force participation in recent decades, surprisingly few studies have investigated participation using longitudinal data. This is an important oversight as studying the continuity, intensity, and type of participation mothers engage in over time is key to understanding how and whether maternal labor force participation is linked with family wellbeing. In this descriptive report we describe maternal labor force participation (employment, unemployment, out of labor force), intensity (part- vs. full-time) and type (nonstandard, multiple job-holding), in the first nine years after giving birth.A second aim of this paper is to describe variation in maternal labor force participation in the years after a birth by maternal education. We do this for a few reasons. Changes in U.S. social policies in the late 1990s led to a greater increase in maternal employment among the least advantaged groups (Coley et al. 2007). Research has also documented the phenomenon of "diverging destinies", whereby the families in which children are being raised are increasingly diverging in terms of key inputs such as time, quality, and money for child health and development by maternal education (McLanahan 2004) and, more generally, there are huge disparities in economic resources that children receive by parents' education levels (Putnam 2015). To shed light on these potential disparities, we study whether the levels, timing, and intensity of maternal labor force participation over time vary by maternal education.A handful of studies have examined women's labor force participation longitudinally and have found that women make numerous entries into and exits from the labor force (or employment) over the life course (Hynes and Clarkberg 2005; Moen 1985; Vandenheuvel 1997). These entries and exits have important implications for thinking about long-term earnings potential, overall economic wellbeing, and ultimately the wellbeing of families. The current study builds on these earlier studies by examining maternal labor force participation in a contemporary cohort of mothers - those who had children between 1998 and 2000, shortly after major welfare reforms in the U.S. and just after maternal labor force participation rates leveled out.2. Data and methods2.1 DataWe use longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS; N~3000), a representative study of births to mothers in large US cities (with populations over 200,000) between 1998 and 2000. These data are ideal for studying recent maternal labor force participation patterns as the data were collected at the time of the birth and again when the child was aged 1 (1999-2001), 3 (2001-2003), 5 (2003-2006), and 9 years (2007-2010). Moreover, from the vantage point of the child, they represent the mother's employment patterns during the first decade of that child's life. The FFCWS included approximately 5,000 births, drawing a random sample from 75 hospitals in 20 large US cities. The study oversampled non-marital births (at a ratio of 3 non-marital to 1 marital birth), resulting in a racially diverse, somewhat economically disadvantaged sample; however, the sample was designed so that when the data are weighted they are representative of mothers who gave birth in the late 1990s in large U.S. cities. The weights also adjust for non-response and attrition. …

Links between motor control and classroom behaviors: Moderation by low birth weight.

Abstract: It is unclear from past research on effortful control whether one of its components, motor control, independently contributes to adaptive classroom behaviors. The goal of this study was to identify associations between early motor control, measured by the walk-a-line task at age 3, and teacher-reported learning-related behaviors (approaches to learning and attention problems) and behavior problems in kindergarten classrooms. Models tested whether children who were vulnerable to poorer learning behaviors and more behavior problems due to having been born low birth weight benefited more, less, or the same as other children from better motor control. Data were drawn from the national Fragile Families and Child-Wellbeing Study (n = 751). Regression models indicated that motor control was significantly associated with better approaches to learning and fewer behavior problems. Children who were low birth weight benefitted more than normal birth weight children from better motor control with respect to their approaches to learning, but equally with respect to behavior problems. Additionally, for low but not normal birth weight children, better motor control predicted fewer attention problems. These findings suggest that motor control follows a compensatory model of development for low birth weight children and classroom behaviors.

Effects of Welfare Reform

Abstract: A key question in welfare policy concerns the potential that welfare-to-work programs have to develop in teenage parents the motivation and skills to provide financially for themselves and their children. The Teenage Parent Welfare Demonstration was a major experiment initiated in 1986 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and evaluated by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., to test the impact of a welfare-to-work program for teenage parents which anticipated many features of the federal Job Opportunities and Basic Skills training program later established in the Family Support Act of 1988. Teenage mothers entering the welfare system were randomly assigned to a regular services group or to an enhanced services group. Teen mothers in the enhanced services group faced mandatory school and work requirements enforced by financial sanctions and received support services such as case management, parenting workshops, child care assistance, and education and training opportunities. This article reviews the policy context in which the Teenage Parent Welfare Demonstration was designed and implemented, and describes how participation in the enhanced services group affected the teen mothers as adults and as parents. Results showed that, for the reasonable aggregate annual cost of $2,400 per participant, the program increased the teenagers' attendance at school and job training programs, and modestly increased the proportion who were employed to 48%, compared with 43% among those receiving regular welfare services. As the participants' earnings from employment increased, their welfare grants shrank. Because these changes offset each other, the program did not improve the economic well-being of the families, although fewer tax dollars were needed to support them. The program did not discourage further childbearing, however, or affect either the parenting behavior of the young women or the development of their children, although the mothers who were most engaged in self-sufficiency activities were more positive and supportive when playing with their children. The Teenage Parent Welfare Demonstration experience revealed that the problems faced by teenage parents vary widely, making tailored services necessary. The evaluation results suggest that supportive, mandatory welfare-to-work interventions need not harm parents or their children in the short term, and that their modest positive effects on the financial independence of the teenage mothers may yield long-term rewards.