Minors
Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Almudena Sevilla
Journal of Human Resources, Summer 2014, Pages 509-539
Abstract:
This paper uses several decades of U.S. time-diary surveys to assess the impact of low-skilled immigration, through lower prices for commercial childcare, on parental time investments. Using an instrumental variables approach that accounts for the endogenous location of immigrants, we find that low-skilled immigration to the United States has contributed to substantial reductions in the time allocated to basic childcare by college-educated mothers of non-school-aged children. However, these mothers have not reduced the time allocated to more stimulating educational and recreational activities with their children. Understanding the factors driving parental-time investments on children is crucial from a child-development perspective.
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Home with Mom: The Effects of Stay-at-Home Parents on Children's Long-Run Educational Outcomes
Eric Bettinger, Torbjørn Hægeland & Mari Rege
Journal of Labor Economics, July 2014, Pages 443-467
Abstract:
In 1998 the Norwegian government introduced a program that increased parents' incentives to stay home with children under the age of 3. Many eligible children had older siblings, and we investigate how this program affected the long-run educational outcomes of the older siblings. Using comprehensive administrative data, we estimate a difference-in-differences model that exploits differences in older siblings' exposures to the program. We find a significant positive treatment effect on older siblings' tenth-grade GPA, and this effect seems to be largely driven by mother's reduced labor force participation and not by changes in family income or father's labor force participation.
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The Schooling of Offspring and the Survival of Parents
Esther Friedman & Robert Mare
Demography, August 2014, Pages 1271-1293
Abstract:
Contemporary stratification research on developed societies usually views the intergenerational transmission of educational advantage as a one-way effect from parent to child. However, parents' investment in their offspring's schooling may yield significant returns for parents themselves in later life. For instance, well-educated offspring have greater knowledge of health and technology to share with their parents and more financial means to provide for them than do their less-educated counterparts. We use data from the 1992-2006 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine whether adult offspring's educational attainments are associated with parents' survival in the United States. We show that adult offspring's educational attainments have independent effects on their parents' mortality, even after controlling for parents' own socioeconomic resources. This relationship is more pronounced for deaths that are linked to behavioral factors: most notably, chronic lower respiratory disease and lung cancer. Furthermore, at least part of the association between offspring's schooling and parents' survival may be explained by parents' health behaviors, including smoking and physical activity. These findings suggest that one way to influence the health of the elderly is through their offspring. To harness the full value of schooling for health, then, a family and multigenerational perspective is needed.
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Pacifiers Disrupt Adults' Responses to Infants' Emotions
Magdalena Rychlowska et al.
Basic and Applied Social Psychology, July/August 2014, Pages 299-308
Abstract:
Research shows that pacifiers disrupt infants' mimicry of facial expressions. This experiment examines whether pacifiers interfere with caretakers' ability to mimic infants' emotions. Adults saw photographs of infants with or without a pacifier. When infants had pacifiers, perceivers showed reduced EMG activity to infants' smiles. Smiles of infants using a pacifier were also rated as less happy than smiles depicted without a pacifier. The same pattern was observed for expressions of distress: adults rated infants presented with pacifiers as less sad than infants without pacifiers. We discuss deleterious effects of pacifier use for the perceiver's resonance with a child's emotions.
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Heightened Maternal Separation Anxiety in the Postpartum: The Role of Socioeconomic Disadvantage
Amanda Cooklin et al.
Journal of Family Issues, September 2014, Pages 1497-1519
Abstract:
Maternal separation anxiety (MSA) refers to feelings of anxiety elicited in a mother during separation from her infant. The role of social and structural disadvantage in the etiology of high MSA has been overlooked. Secondary analysis of data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (N = 3,897) revealed that compared to socioeconomically advantaged women, women of low socioeconomic position had a fourfold increased odds of reporting high (>80th percentile) MSA (odds ratio = 4.37, 95% confidence interval = 3.24-5.89), even when maternal and infant characteristics were controlled for. Inadequate social support and residing in a poor quality neighborhood were also significantly associated with high MSA in adjusted analyses. These findings indicate that high MSA is more common in socioeconomically disadvantaged women and might be a response to adverse circumstances. Mothers' experience of, and reasons for, MSA needs to be considered in policy formulation about parental leave and postpartum employment, particularly for disadvantaged mothers.
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Childhood Sexual Abuse and Later-Life Economic Consequences
Alan Barrett, Yumiko Kamiya & Vincent O' Sullivan
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The impact of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) on later-life health outcomes has been studied extensively and links with depression, anxiety and self-harm have been established. However, there has been relatively little research undertaken on the possible impact of CSA on later-life economic outcomes. Here, we explore whether older people who report having experienced CSA have weaker labour force attachment and lower incomes compared to other people. We use data from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA) which is a nationally-representative survey of people aged 50 and over. We find that male victims of CSA are almost three times more likely to be out of the labour force due to sickness and disability. They also have significantly lower incomes and are more likely to live alone. These effects remain even when we control for childhood economic circumstances, other adverse childhood events, current mental health difficulties and negative health behaviors. We do not find any effects for female victims. Among the policy implications are the need to be more aware of the complex effects of CSA when designing labour market activation strategies such as training for the unemployed. The results are also relevant in the legal context where compensation awards are determined.
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Neural plasticity in fathers of human infants
Pilyoung Kim et al.
Social Neuroscience, September/October 2014, Pages 522-535
Abstract:
Fathering plays an important role in infants' socioemotional and cognitive development. Previous studies have identified brain regions that are important for parenting behavior in human mothers. However, the neural basis of parenting in human fathers is largely unexplored. In the current longitudinal study, we investigated structural changes in fathers' brains during the first 4 months postpartum using voxel-based morphometry analysis. Biological fathers (n = 16) with full-term, healthy infants were scanned at 2-4 weeks postpartum (time 1) and at 12-16 weeks postpartum (time 2). Fathers exhibited increase in gray matter (GM) volume in several neural regions involved in parental motivation, including the hypothalamus, amygdala, striatum, and lateral prefrontal cortex. On the other hand, fathers exhibited decreases in GM volume in the orbitofrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and insula. The findings provide evidence for neural plasticity in fathers' brains. We also discuss the distinct patterns of associations among neural changes, postpartum mood symptoms, and parenting behaviors among fathers.
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Associations Between Early Life Stress and Gene Methylation in Children
Sarah Romens et al.
Child Development, forthcoming
Abstract:
Children exposed to extreme stress are at heightened risk for developing mental and physical disorders. However, little is known about mechanisms underlying these associations in humans. An emerging insight is that children's social environments change gene expression, which contributes to biological vulnerabilities for behavioral problems. Epigenetic changes in the glucocorticoid receptor gene, a critical component of stress regulation, were examined in whole blood from 56 children aged 11-14 years. Children exposed to physical maltreatment had greater methylation within exon 1F in the NR3C1 promoter region of the gene compared to nonmaltreated children, including the putative NGFI-A (nerve growth factor) binding site. These results highlight molecular mechanisms linking childhood stress with biological changes that may lead to mental and physical disorders.
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Infant stress exposure produces persistent enhancement of fear learning across development
Jennifer Quinn, Rachel Skipper & Dragana Claflin
Developmental Psychobiology, July 2014, Pages 1008-1016
Abstract:
In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that early life stress experiences persistently impact subsequent physiological, cognitive, and emotional responses. In cases of trauma, these early experiences can result in anxiety disorders such as phobias and posttraumatic stress disorder. In the present paper, we examined the effects of infant footshock stress exposure at postnatal day (PND) 17 on subsequent contextual fear conditioning at postnatal days 18 (Experiment 1), 24 (Experiment 2), or 90 (Experiment 3). In each experiment, PND17 footshock stress exposure enhanced later fear conditioning, indicating that the stress enhancement of fear learning (SEFL) persists throughout development. Memory for the original stress exposure context was gradually forgotten, with significant fear expression evident at PND20, and a complete lack of fear expression in that same context at PND90. These data suggest that the stress-enhancing component of infant fear learning is dissociable from the infant contextual fear memory per se. In other words, early life stress produces persistent effects on subsequent cognition that are independent of the memory for that early life event.
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The presence of ADHD: Spillovers between siblings
Sanni Nørgaard Breining
Economics Letters, September 2014, Pages 469-473
Abstract:
This paper uses high quality register-data to study the spillover effects on firstborns from having a younger sibling suffering from ADHD. Using OLS and cousin fixed effects analyses it is found that the educational outcomes of healthy firstborn children are significantly reduced by the presence of a disordered sibling.
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Angela Henneberger et al.
Criminal Justice and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Determining the interdependence of family and peer influences on the development of delinquency is critical to defining and implementing effective interventions. This study explored the longitudinal relationship among harsh punishment, positive parenting, peer delinquency, and adolescent delinquency using data from a sub-sample of the Pittsburgh Girls Study. Participants were 622 adolescent girls (42% European American, 53% African American); families living in low-income neighborhoods were oversampled. After controlling for the effects of race, living in a single parent household, and receipt of public assistance, harsh punishment and peer delinquency in early adolescence were positively related to delinquency in mid-adolescence. No significant main effects of positive parenting or interaction effects between parenting and peer delinquency were observed. Thus, the effects of harsh parenting and peer delinquency are independent and perhaps additive, rather than interdependent. Results indicate the continued importance of targeting both parenting and peer relationships to prevent delinquency in adolescent girls.
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Brian Doss et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, August 2014, Pages 483-494
Abstract:
The transition to parenthood has been repeatedly identified as a stressful period, with couples reporting difficulties in domains of individual, coparenting, and relationship functioning. Moreover, these difficulties have been shown to impact children's development. To buffer against these difficulties, numerous effective parenting, couple, and combined interventions have been developed; however, these interventions are typically lengthy, which limits their potential for dissemination. Therefore, in the present study, we developed and tested separate 6-hr interventions that focused exclusively on improving either coparenting or relationship functioning. In a randomized control trial, 90 heterosexual couples (180 individuals) were randomly assigned to an information control group, a coparenting intervention, or a relationship intervention and assessed on 7 occasions during the 2 years following birth. Results revealed that women and high-risk men in both the couple and coparenting interventions showed fewer declines in relationship satisfaction (Cohen's d = 0.53-0.99) and other areas of relationship functioning. Women also reported improved coparenting in both intervention groups (Cohen's d = 0.47-1.06). Additionally, women in both interventions experienced less perceived stress during the first year after birth. Given similar effects of the 2 interventions on coparenting and relationship functioning, future dissemination may be enhanced by delivery of coparenting interventions, as coparenting (compared with relationship) interventions seem to attract more interest from couples and are likely easier to integrate into existing services.
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Ritu Bhandari et al.
Social Neuroscience, September/October 2014, Pages 536-547
Abstract:
Oxytocin has been implicated in parent-infant attachment and social recognition. With respect to emotion recognition memory, both memory-enhancing and impairing effects have been observed, suggesting an influence of individual factors. We assessed the effects of oxytocin on memory for infant cues, and whether these effects are moderated by self-reported childhood emotional maltreatment. Nulliparous females (N = 102) participated in a randomized, double-blind, between-subjects study with intranasal oxytocin or placebo administration. Participants' memory was tested using the Baby Social Reward Task, where participants were asked to select the happier infant from a pair of two infants based on the information that they received about the infants' mood in the previous phase. Participants reporting more childhood emotional maltreatment were less accurate in this task after inhaling oxytocin. Our findings add to a growing body of literature showing that the effects of intranasal oxytocin on memory and social behavior are moderated by adverse early life experiences.
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Jana Vyrastekova et al.
PLoS ONE, June 2014
Abstract:
Evolutionary theory predicts humans to be more altruistic towards genetically more closely related kin. Because fathers face uncertainty about the relation to their children, the asymmetric parental altruism hypothesis predicts mothers to provide a higher share of parental care than fathers. We tested this hypothesis using parental choice experiments in rural Tanzania, in which fathers and mothers could choose between an outcome that benefited themselves and an outcome that benefited their children. When a parent was solely responsible for the outcome, mothers chose more altruistic than fathers. However when the choice situation was changed into a coordination game in which responsibility was shared with the partner, the sex difference disappeared. Fathers then chose somewhat more altruistic, but mothers substantially less. Our findings thus partly support the asymmetric parental altruism hypothesis, but they also show that parental altruism is influenced by the context in which choices are taken.