Family Formation History and the Psychological Well-Being of Women from Diverse Racial-Ethnic Groups.

Studying disparities in psychological well-being across diverse groups of women can illuminate the racialized health risks of gendered family life. Integrating life course and demand-reward perspectives, this study applied sequencing techniques to the National Longitudinal Study of Youth: 1979 to reveal seven trajectories of partnership and parenthood through women's 20s and 30s, including several in which parenthood followed partnership at different ages and with varying numbers of children and others characterized by nonmarital fertility or eschewing such roles altogether. These sequences differentiated positive and negative dimensions of women's well-being in their 50s. Women who inhabited any family role had greater life satisfaction and fewer depressive symptoms, although these general patterns differed by race-ethnicity. Family roles were more closely related to well-being than ill-being for White women, parenthood had more pronounced importance across outcomes for Black women, and the coupling of partnership and parenthood generally mattered more for Latinas.

Family Structure and Secondary Exposure to Violence in the Context of Varying Neighborhood Risks and Resources.

Secondary exposure to violence in the community is a prevalent developmental risk with implications for youths' short- and long-term socioemotional functioning. This study used longitudinal, multilevel data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods to consider how family structure, including parental instability, is associated with youths' secondary exposure to violence across diverse neighborhood contexts. Results showed that both living in a stable single-parent household and experiencing parental instability were associated with greater secondary exposure to violence compared with living in a stable two-parent household. The associations between having a single parent or experiencing parental instability and secondary exposure to violence were especially strong in neighborhoods with high levels of crime and strong neighborhood ties.

Family structure patterns from childhood through adolescence and the timing of cohabitation among diverse groups of young adult women and men.

Family structure changes experienced by children are likely to shape their transitions into young adulthood, including the formation of their own romantic relationships. This study examined links between children's family structure trajectories from childhood through adolescence and their timing of entry into cohabitation as young adults, a transition with implications for future relationship instability through adulthood. Repeated measures latent class analysis identified configurations of family structures and family structure changes from birth through age 15 among 10,706 young people in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Children and Young Adults. A Cox proportional hazard model then used the resulting classes to predict timing into cohabitation over the period from age 15 to age 38. Both timing of family structure transitions and the type of transitions (e.g., early transitioning into a stepfamily home) were associated with earlier entry into cohabitation. Notably, links between family structure trajectories and the timing of cohabitation differed by gender and race/ethnicity (Latinx, African American, White), such as a faster entry into cohabitation by women who experienced early entry into stepfamily structures. Regardless of gender, Latinx and White young adults were faster to enter into cohabitation if they lived in a stepfamily structure during early childhood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Estimating Children's Household Instability Between Birth and Age 18 Using Longitudinal Household Roster Data.

Previous descriptions of the composition and stability of children's households have focused on the presence of parents and the stability of mothers' marital and cohabiting relationships. We use data available in the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation to expand the description of children's household composition and stability. We find that one in five children lives with nonnuclear household members. These other household members are a source of substantial household instability. In addition, during the period of observation (2008-2013), children experienced considerable residential instability. Thus, children's experience of household instability is much more common and frequent than previously documented. Moreover, levels of both residential and compositional instability are higher for children with less-educated mothers and for racial/ethnic minorities.

Mothers' Partnerships, Men in the Home, and Adolescents' Secondary Exposure to Violence.

Family instability means that many U.S. youth spend time without biological fathers and with other men. This study extends the literature on the developmental implications of living with fathers and father figures by investigating the association between the presence of mothers' male romantic partners in the home and secondary exposure to violence with a focus on variability according to the identities of the men and the communities of the family. Fixed effects models of multilevel data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (n = 2,201) revealed that living with mothers' partners did not have a general protective or risky association with youths' secondary exposure to violence. This exposure, however, was lower when such men were youths' biological fathers (vs. social fathers) and when they were married to (vs. cohabiting with) youths' mothers. The link between men's marital status and exposure to violence appeared stronger in higher-crime neighborhoods.

Family Instability and Exposure to Violence in the Early Life Course.

Family instability has been linked with a host of outcomes across the early life course. This study extends this literature by connecting instability with violence in the community by examining the associations among family structure, family structure change, and secondary exposure to violence during adolescence across diverse segments of the population. Using longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods study, we found that living with a single parent and experiencing family structure changes were associated with secondary exposure to violence. Multiple group models suggest that partner change translated into more exposure for boys than girls. Findings also suggest that family instability may lead to more secondary exposure to violence for African American youth.

Family Instability and Children's Health.

Research on family instability is fertile ground for translation into policy and practice. This article describes how basic science in this area can more effectively support work in later stages of the translational research process. To begin, the scope of family instability is outlined with trends, causes, and effects. Next, a conceptual model of the effects of family instability on children's health identifies focal aspects that could be leveraged for translational research: developmental domain, developmental time, mechanisms, and points of variation. The guidelines presented are meant to be general and applicable to a variety of topics and fields in which family scholars aim to improve basic research that can contribute to and move forward a translational family science.

"Where Have All the Good Men Gone?" Gendered Interactions in Online Dating.

This article explores gendered patterns of online dating and their implications for heterosexual union formation. The authors hypothesized that traditional gender norms combine with preferences for more socially desirable partners to benefit men and disadvantage women in the earliest stages of dating. They tested this with 6 months of online dating data from a mid-sized southwestern city (N = 8,259 men and 6,274 women). They found that both men and women tend to send messages to the most socially desirable alters in the dating market, regardless of their own social desirability. They also found that women who initiate contacts connect with more desirable partners than those who wait to be contacted, but women are 4 times less likely to send messages than men. They concluded that socioeconomic similarities in longer term unions result, in part, from relationship termination (i.e., nonreciprocity) rather than initial preferences for similar partners.

Maternal Education, Early Child Care and the Reproduction of Advantage.

The social and human capital that educational attainment provides women enables them to better navigate their children's passages through school. In this study, we examine a key mechanism in this intergenerational process: mothers' selection of early child care. Analyses of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development revealed that maternal education was positively associated with configurations of child-care characteristics (i.e., type, quality, quantity) most closely linked to children's school readiness. This association was not solely a function of mother's income or employment status, persisted despite controls for many observable confounds (e.g., maternal cognitive and psychological skills, paternal characteristics), and, according to post-hoc indices, was fairly robust in terms of unobservable confounds.

Puberty and the Education of Girls*

This study extends previous research on the social psychological implications of pubertal timing to education by applying a life course framework to data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study. Early pubertal timing, which has previously been associated with major social psychological changes in girls' lives during middle school, predicted girls' grade point average and probability of course failure at the start of high school. Because of this initial failure during the high school transition, it also predicted their probability of dropping out of high school, and, among those who graduated, their grade point average at the end of high school. Such research demonstrates one way in which the immediate social psychological risk of early pubertal timing, measured as the age at menarche, translates into long-term disadvantage for girls, thereby opening up new avenues of research for social psychologists interested in youth development, health, and education.

Marital Transitions, Parenting, and Schooling: Exploring the Link Between Family-Structure History and Adolescents' Academic Status.

The linkage between family structure and adolescents' academic experiences is part of a larger, dynamic process unfolding over time. To investigate this phenomenon, this study drew on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study. Logistic regressions revealed that family structure at birth predicted students' academic status in math in the ninth grade, and multinomial regressions revealed that family instability, along with curricular location in the ninth grade, parenting behaviors, and adolescents' adjustment and aspirations, distinguished those who completed higher-level math by the end of high school from those who did not but still graduated from high school and from those who dropped out of high school.