Recent research consistently reports that persistent poverty has more detrimental effects on IQ, school achievement, and socioemotional functioning than transitory poverty, with children experiencing both types of poverty generally doing less well than never-poor children. Higher rates of perinatal complications, reduced access to resources that buffer the negative effects of perinatal complications, increased exposure to lead, and less home-based cognitive stimulation partly account for diminished cognitive functioning in poor children. These factors, along with lower teacher expectancies and poorer academic-readiness skills, also appear to contribute to lower levels of school achievement among poor children. The link between socioeconomic disadvantage and children's socioemotional functioning appears to be mediated partly by harsh, inconsistent parenting and elevated exposure to acute and chronic stressors. The implications of research findings for practice and policy are considered.

Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development

Family processes affecting the socioemotional functioning of children living in poor families and families experiencing economic decline are reviewed. Black children are of primary interest in the article because they experience disproportionate shares of the burden of poverty and economic loss and are at substantially higher risk than white children of experiencing attendant socioemotional problems. It is argued that (a) poverty and economic loss diminish the capacity for supportive, consistent, and involved parenting and render parents more vulnerable to the debilitating effects of negative life events, (b) a major mediator of the link between economic hardship and parenting behavior is psychological distress deriving from an excess of negative life events, undesirable chronic conditions, and the absence and disruption of marital bonds, (c) economic hardship adversely affects children's socioemotional functioning in part through its impact on the parent's behavior toward the child, and (d) father-child relations under conditions of economic hardship depend on the quality of relations between the mother and father. The extent to which psychological distress is a source of race differences in parenting behavior is considered. Finally, attention is given to the mechanisms by which parents' social networks reduce emotional strain, lessen the tendency toward punitive, coercive, and inconsistent parenting behavior, and, in turn, foster positive socioemotional development in economically deprived children.

The Impact of Economic Hardship on Black Families and Children: Psychological Distress, Parenting, and Socioemotional Development

The authors first describe individual differences in the structure of the self. In the independent self-construal, representations of others are separate from the self. In the interdependent self-construal, others are considered part of the self (H. Markus & S. Kitayama, 1991). In general, men in the United States are thought to construct and maintain an independent self-construal, whereas women are thought to construct and maintain an interdependent self-construal. The authors review the psychological literature to demonstrate that many gender differences in cognition, motivation, emotion, and social behavior may be explained in terms of men's and women's different self-construals. Recognition of the interdependent self-construal as a possible alternative conception of the self may stimulate new investigations into the ways the self influences a person's thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Models of the Self: Self-Construals and Gender

In this innovative book, a well-known feminist and sociologist-who is also the founding editor of Gender & Society-challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber argues that gender is wholly a product of socialization, subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation, and that it is a social institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize positions of power.

Paradoxes of gender

In this article, the author argues that we need to conceptualize gender as a social structure, and by doing so, we can better analyze the ways in which gender is embedded in the individual, interactional, and institutional dimensions of our society. To conceptualize gender as a structure situates gender at the same level of general social significance as the economy and the polity. The author also argues that while concern with intersectionality must continue to be paramount, different structures of inequality have different constructions and perhaps different influential causal mechanisms at any given historical moment. We need to follow a both/and strategy to understand gender structure, race structure, and other structures of inequality as they currently operate while also systematically paying attention to how these axes of domination intersect. Finally, the author suggests we pay more attention to doing research and writing theory with explicit attention to how our work can indeed help transform as w...

Gender As a Social Structure Theory Wrestling with Activism

Black Masculinity: The Black Male's Role in American Society

Edited by Robert Staples, a leading scholar on Black family Life, this comprehensive anthology of 36 readings provides readers with a combination of empirical research and scholarly essays that are both accessible to undergraduates and accurately reflect all the diverse trends in the Afro-American family life.

The Black family: Essays and studies

This article is a review and assessment of the past decade's literature on AsianAmerican, black, Chicano, and Native American families. The authors report that, prior to 1970, minority families were subject to negative stereotypes which were not empirically supported. In the case of blacks and Chicanos, the family literature of the 1970s represented an improvement because it depicted the positive aspects of their family life. Theory and research on Asian and Native American families remained too limited to make any generalizations about their family lifestyles. The insider-outsider perspective continued to be a source of controversy in the study of minority families.

Racial and cultural variations among American families: A decennial review of the literature on minority families.

Foreword (Robert B. Hill). Preface to the Revised Edition. Preface to the First Edition. Acknowledgments. 1. History as Fact and Fiction. 2. Studying Black Families. 3. Work and Money: The Struggle. 4. Patterns of Sexual Intimacy. 5. Singlehood and Partner Selection. 6. Gender Roles and Male Sexism. 7. Marital Patterns and Interactions. 8. The Challenges of Parenting. 9. Kinship and Community Support. 10. Social Change, Challenges, and Prospects. Selected Readings. References. About the Authors. Name Index. Subject Index.

Black Families at the Crossroads: Challenges and Prospects

The family ideology of black Americans is compared with actualfamily arrangements and lifestyles. Dissonance between the two is explained by the intervention of structural conditions that prevent the fulfillment of normative familial roles by black males. Exchange theory is used to explain the conflict between family ideology and structural conditions: in general, black women fail to marry or remain married when the costs outweigh the benefits

Robert Staples

Papers

Black Masculinity: The Black Male's Role in American Society

The Black family: Essays and studies

Racial and cultural variations among American families: A decennial review of the literature on minority families.

Black Families at the Crossroads: Challenges and Prospects

Changes in Black Family Structure: The Conflict Between Family Ideology and Structural Conditions