Brief
This report highlights the changing socio-demographic composition of program participants for AFDC/TANF, SNAP and SSI between 1988 and 2015 and discusses the importance of addressing the needs of program participants from diverse backgrounds. (Author abstract)
Other
These tables look at the demographic characteristics of the adult population 15 years and older. They describe the current marital status of people in the United States for selected age and earnings groups, as well as living arrangements and characteristics of parents with coresident children under 18. (Author abstract)
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Journal Article Largely overlooked in the theoretical and empirical literature on the crime decline is a long tradition of research in criminology and urban sociology that considers how violence is regulated through informal sources of social control arising from residents and organizations internal to communities. In this article, we incorporate the “systemic” model of community life into debates on the U.S. crime drop, and we focus on the role that local nonprofit organizations played in the national decline of violence from the 1990s to the 2010s. Using longitudinal data and a strategy to account for the…
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Journal Article We identify multiple predictors of five types of father involvement in 167 low- to moderate-income two-parent Mexican American families with fifth-grade children. Analyses show that fathers' egalitarian gender attitudes and mothers' education are associated with higher levels of father involvement. Fathers are more involved in monitoring and interacting with children when families place more emphasis on family rituals, they are more involved in supervising children when mothers are employed more hours, and they perform more housework when mothers earn more and the family is under economic…
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Journal Article A growing body of research documents the importance of positive father involvement in children's development. However, research on fathers in Latino families is sparse, and research contextualizing the father-child relationship within a cultural framework is needed. The present study examined how fathers' cultural practices and values predicted their fifth-grade children's report of positive father involvement in a sample of 450 two-parent Mexican-origin families. Predictors included Spanish- and English-language use, Mexican and American cultural values, and positive machismo (i.e.,…
Other
The present study was based on analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a multi-year national sample of young adults which began in 1979 (NLSY79). To explore the role that father involvement during adolescence has on gender role ideology of young adult Hispanic males and females, data from 406 Hispanic participants, a subset of the children of NLSY79 female respondents, were reviewed from the 1992 through 2002 biannual survey waves. Gender role ideology is the extent to which opinions and beliefs about family and work roles differ based on sex, and range along a…
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Journal Article This longitudinal study focused on fathers' involvement from the prenatal period through infants' first year in Dominican immigrants (n = 73), Mexican immigrants (n = 65) and African Americans (n = 66) residing in New York City. Fathers' prenatal involvement, the quality of the mother-father relationship, fathers' postnatal involvement with their 1- and 6 month olds and fathers' involvement with their 14 month-olds (i.e., time spent with infant; eating meals with infant; activities with infant) were examined. Father involvement was uniformly high and stable. Fathers' prenatal involvement…
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Journal Article The current study investigated how fathering behaviors (acceptance, rejection, monitoring, consistent discipline, and involvement) are related to preadolescent adjustment in Mexican American and European American stepfamilies and intact families. Cross-sectional data from 393 7th graders, their schoolteachers, and parents were used to examine links between different dimensions of fathering and adolescent outcomes. Following an ecological multivariate model, family SES, marital satisfaction, and mothers' parenting were included as controls. In all contexts, fathering had significant effects…
Brief
Low-skilled men, especially minorities, typically work at low levels and provide little support for their children. Conservatives blame this on government willingness to support families, which frees the fathers from responsibility, while liberals say that men are denied work by racial bias or the economy--either a lack of jobs or low wages, which depress the incentive to work. The evidence for all these theories is weak. Thus, changing program benefits or incentives is unlikely to solve the men's work problem. More promising is the idea of linking assistance with administrative requirements…
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Journal Article Paternal involvement with children is associated with better outcomes for children and family functioning. There are, however, few data examining the intersection of cultural norms and paternal involvement. For Latino fathers in the United States, paternal involvement may vary on the basis of cultural and gender norms, acculturation process, and ethnic identity. The current study used self-report surveys to examine the perceptions of 67 Latino fathers regarding their paternal involvement, machismo (i.e., macho and caballerismo), degree of acculturation, and ethnic identity. The bivariate…
