Young children are not physically fit just because they are young. Head Start programs can make a major contribution to promoting good health and strong bodies for children by intentionally integrating appropriate physical activity and wise nutrition choices into their daily routines. A deliberate and "active start" in Head Start can improve children's physical, mental and social development - all of which are critical to school readiness. Through greater intentionality, we can increase children's protective factors against chronic disease and obesity across their entire lifespan, and build a…
Other
Ravenell (2006) reports that a review of health and health perceptions in young African American men (15-45 years old) finds that African American males are disproportionately affected by accidental injury, human immunodeficiency virus and cardiovascular disease. These conditions are preventable and are amenable to primary care intervention yet young African American men underutilize primary care health services. Because healthcare utilization is strongly dependent on health beliefs, the purpose of this qualitative study was to identify and explore young African American men's perceptions of…
Other
This 69-minute DVD presents strategies for effectively communicating with young children and preventing tantrums. Information is provided on: the developmental characteristics of toddlers, steps for speaking toddler-ese, strategies for addressing behavior problems, techniques for preventing tantrums, and the success stories of families using the techniques. Questions about the strategies are answered at the end of the presentation.
The association between parental mental health problems and child wellbeing has rarely been examined in the context of non-traditional families. Using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), this analysis exploits the full range of parent relationship types, including married, cohabiting, and non-resident relationships, to examine the effects of having one parent with major depressive disorder (MDE) and/or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and two parents with MDE/GAD on child's behavior problems at age three. We find that maternal mental illness is associated with increased…
This final report discusses the activities and outcomes of a 5-year project in Los Angeles designed to improve the lives of abused, neglected, or at-risk children by treating bonding and attachment difficulties between fathers and their biological children. Components of the program include: group therapy for fathers, small groups, play therapy activities for children, vocational counseling for fathers, assistance with community support, and advocacy for fatherhood initiatives. Over the grant period, 18 fatherhood programs were started by 112 professionals who attended a five day training…
This study addresses four sets of related questions: (1) What are the conditions and capabilities of new unmarried parents, especially fathers? How many of these men hold steady jobs? How many want to be involved in raising their children? (2) What is the nature of the relationships between unmarried parents? How many of these couples are involved in stable relationships? What proportion expects to marry? What proportion is exposed to high levels of conflict or domestic violence? (3) What factors push new unmarried parents together? What factors pull them apart? In particular, how do public…
The thesis of this study is that children and adolescents who grow up in intact families are generally less likely to smoke, to drink, or to try illegal drugs than children and adolescents who grow up in non-intact families, which, for the purposes of this paper, are defined as single-parent families, blended or stepfamilies, and no-parent families. Using both a bivariate regression model and several multiple regression models, the paper sets out to test the hypothesis that family structure has a significant impact on the level of risk of adolescent drug use even when controlling for other…
Report, Other
As part of the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act of 1998, Congress established a medical child support working group to identify barriers to medical support enforcement and to recommend ways to address them. This webpage report is an effort to provide greater background on one such barrier - the lack of access by many nonresident parents to employment-based health care coverage. The report develops a national estimate of the extent to which nonresident fathers have access to employment-based health care coverage, and considers the potential for increasing the number of children…
The Caring Dads program is one of the first group intervention manuals designed specifically for men who have maltreated their children and / or exposed them to domestic violence. Developed and piloted over five years, this 17-session program draws from best practices in the fields of batterer intervention, parenting, child maltreatment, behavior change, and working with resistant clients. The Caring Dads manual provides clear, easy-to-follow guidelines and activities for the implementation of the program and is a useful tool for both experienced and relatively novice service providers.…
This study uses a unique dataset to examine parental influence on children's dietary intake and whether or not the children will become obese. The study shows that household income, parents' time spent with children, and parents' work experiences significantly affect children's energy and fat intake and obesity-related outcomes. For example, the more time mothers spent with their children, the lower the children's Body Mass Index (BMI) was. On the other hand, the more time fathers spent with their children, the higher the children's BMI was. And the more time both fathers and mothers spent…
