Twentieth-Century Change in the Educational Costs of Adolescent Childbearing.

Although studies observe heterogeneity in the effects of adolescent childbearing on schooling, little is currently known about when this pattern emerged or how it changed across cohorts of women who lived in distinct periods of US history. This article identifies the potential origins of effect heterogeneity in the educational costs of adolescent childbearing and extends recent advances in causal inference to detect group differences in heterogeneity. The analysis applies this approach to four cohorts of women from the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) who entered adolescence before, during, and after expansive economic, demographic, and cultural change in the twentieth century. Results suggest that the educational costs of adolescent childbearing, as well as heterogeneity in those costs, increased for women in the latter half of the twentieth century, especially for millennial women born 1980-84. The authors conclude that midcentury social changes fundamentally altered the educational costs of adolescent childbearing for women.

Cumulative Disadvantage or Strained Advantage? Remote Schooling, Paid Work Status, and Parental Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, parents experienced difficulties around employment and children's schooling, likely with detrimental mental health implications. We analyze National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data (N = 2,829) to estimate depressive symptom changes from 2019 to 2021 by paid work status and children's schooling modality, considering partnership status, gender, and race-ethnicity differences. We draw on cumulative disadvantage theory alongside strained advantage theory to test whether mental health declines were steeper for parents with more disadvantaged statuses or for parents with more advantaged statuses. Parents with work disruptions, without paid work, or with children in remote school experienced the greatest increases in depressive symptoms, with steepest increases among single parents without paid work and single parents with children in remote school (cumulative disadvantage), fathers without paid work (strained advantage), and White parents with remote school (strained advantage). We discuss the uneven impacts of the pandemic on mental health and implications for long-term health disparities.

Women's childbearing histories and their alcohol use at midlife.

There has been increased alcohol use among mid-life women in recent decades. Given the association between alcohol use and childbearing earlier in life and the centrality of childbearing for other aspects of mid-life women's health, we examined how multiple components of childbearing histories were associated with mid-life alcohol use. Our analysis included 3,826 women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). We estimated how nine components of childbearing were associated with women's alcohol use at age 50. We investigated these components independently and also created six childbearing profiles using Mixed-Mode Latent Class Analysis (MM-LCA). The most alcohol was consumed by women without any childbirths, with older ages at first birth, with low parity, and with the same or fewer births than expected. Women with older ages at first and last birth and more childbirths were less likely to abstain from alcohol compared to women with younger ages at first and last birth and fewer childbirths. Our MM-LCA demonstrated that women with multiple childbirths over a long period of time consumed the least alcohol compared to other groups. Binge drinking at mid-life was generally not associated with childbearing histories in our models. In summary, childbearing histories mattered for women's drinking behaviors at mid-life. Given that an increasing number of women do not have children, the age at first birth continues to trend older, and parity is decreasing, we may expect mid-life women's alcohol use to continue to increase in line with these observed fertility trends.

Sequencing of Births by Wantedness: Implications for Changes in Mid-Life Health Among Aging NLSY79 Women.

OBJECTIVES: As life course frameworks highlight and gerontological studies confirm, the health implications of early birth timing (e.g., adolescent births) and unplanned births (e.g., unwanted or mistimed births) extend years after those births into mid and later life. Yet past research often overlooks the considerable diversity in sequencing and timing of unplanned births even within the same individual (e.g., having both wanted and unwanted births), which are likely fundamental for women's long-term health trajectories. We develop a holistic understanding of birth timing and wantedness to provide insight into when and how childbearing histories matter for aging women's health. METHODS: We use sequence analysis with hierarchical cluster method and estimate regression models using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,231) to examine how timing and patterning of births by wantedness are associated with changes in physical and mental health from ages 40 to 50. RESULTS: We identify 7 clusters of childbearing sequences. Of those 7 clusters, respondents with sequences characterized by wanted births in their 20s and 30s had the smallest declines in health in mid-life, whereas respondents with sequences with mainly unwanted births at any age or with mainly mistimed births beginning in adolescence had the greatest health declines. Adjusting for social and economic variables accounted for some, but not all, health differences across childbearing clusters. DISCUSSION: This project demonstrates the need for comprehensive life course perspectives on long-term health implications of birth wantedness and timing, recognizing diversity within and between individuals.

Age at first birth and women's midlife health: Cohort and race differences across the 20th century.

We test whether the negative association between socially "early" childbearing and poor health in later adulthood, well-established in prior research, differs across distinct historical contexts in the U.S.We further examine whether socioeconomic status explains this shift in the impact of childbearing timing and poor health and whether there are additional differences across racial groups. To address these questions, we pooled data from two nationally representative longitudinal surveys: the National Longitudinal Surveys' Mature Women (born 1922-1937) and Youth 1979 (born 1957-1964). Together, these NLS cohorts include women who entered adolescence before and after the major economic, political, and demographic changes in the latter half of the twentieth century that gave women access to socioeconomic structures previously limited to White men. These data thus provide a unique opportunity to test cohort and racial differences. Overall, findings suggest that the negative association of young childbearing, which included adolescent childbearing and childbearing in early 20s, with midlife health grew across the two cohorts, with this largely explained by differences in adult educational attainment. This cohort shift appeared especially large for White women compared to Black women. This study highlights the importance of sociopolitical context in shaping the health consequences of major life events like childbearing.

Relationship Status-Based Health Disparities during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Previous research finds that marriage is a privileged family form with health benefits. These health advantages may have shifted during the pandemic, as more time was spent at home and resources strained. This study compares differences in three health outcomes across relationship statuses between April and December 2020 using a nationally-representative US survey, the Household Pulse Survey (N = 1,422,733). As the pandemic progressed, larger differences emerged when comparing married and never married respondents' probabilities of fair or poor health, depression, and anxiety as never married people had the steepest decline in health, even adjusting for pandemic-related stressors (e.g., food insufficiency). Yet, widowed and divorced/separated respondents' greater probabilities of these three health outcomes compared to married respondents' narrowed over this same period. During the pandemic, relationship status and self-rated health patterns were similar for men and women, but for mental health there was evidence that the growing advantage of marriage relative to never being married was more pronounced for men, whereas the shrinking advantage of marriage relative to being previously married was more pronounced for women. This study identifies the unique health needs for never married adults during the pandemic, demonstrating that social conditions around the pandemic likely exacerbated health disparities by relationship status.

Parent-Adult Child Estrangement in the United States by Gender, Race/ethnicity, and Sexuality.

Objective: To provide nationally-representative estimates of parent-adult child estrangement. Background: Population-level research is needed on parent-adult child estrangement to understand the full range of family dynamics in the U.S. Method: We estimate logistic regression models using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Child and Young Adult supplement to determine estimates of estrangement (and subsequent unestrangement) from mothers (N=8,495) and fathers (N=8,119) by children's gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. We then estimate hazards of first estrangement from mothers (N = 7,919) and fathers (N = 6,410), adjusting for adult child's and parents' social and economic characteristics. Results: Six percent of respondents report a period of estrangement from mothers, with an average age of first maternal estrangement of 26 years old; 26 percent of respondents report estrangement from fathers, with an average age of first paternal estrangement of 23 years old. Results further show heterogeneity by gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality; for example, daughters are less likely to be estranged from their mothers than are sons, Black adult children are less likely than White adult children to be estranged from their mothers but more likely to be estranged from fathers, and gay, lesbian, and bisexual adult children are more likely than heterosexuals to be estranged from fathers. The majority of estranged adult children become unestranged from mothers (81%) and fathers (69%) in subsequent waves. Conclusion: This study provides compelling new evidence on an overlooked aspect of intergenerational relationships, concluding with insight into the structural forces that unequally contribute to estrangement patterns.

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Mental Health and Mental Health Care During The COVID-19 Pandemic.

During the pandemic, the overall mental health of the US population declined. Given higher rates of COVID-19 infections and deaths experienced by communities of color along with greater exposure to pandemic-related stressors (e.g., unemployment, food insecurity), we expect that the decline in mental health during the pandemic was more pronounced among Black, Hispanic, and Asian adults, with these groups also having less access to mental health services. We examine two nationally representative US surveys: the 2019 National Household Interview Survey (NHIS; N = 30,368) and the 2020-2021 Household Pulse Survey (HPS; N = 1,677,238). We find mental health of Black, Hispanic, and Asian respondents worsened relative to White respondents during the pandemic, with significant increases in depression and anxiety among racialized minorities compared to Whites. There is also evidence of especially high mental health burden for Black adults around the murder of George Floyd by police and for Asian adults around the murder of six Asian women in Atlanta. White respondents are most likely to receive professional mental health care before and during the pandemic, and Black, Hispanic, and Asian respondents demonstrate higher levels of unmet mental health care needs during the pandemic than White respondents. Our results indicate that within the current environment, White adults are at a large and systemic advantage buffering them from unexpected crises-like the COVID-19 pandemic. Without targeted interventions, the long-term social consequences of the pandemic and other co-occurring events (e.g., death of Black and Hispanic people by police) will likely include widening mental health disparities between racial/ethnic groups.

Past Experiences and Anticipated Futures in the Lives of Transgender and Nonbinary People.

Transgender and nonbinary people's life experiences are highly heterogenous and shaped by broader structural and cultural forces. We analyze experiences identified on lifeline interviews from 87 transgender and nonbinary adults in Atlanta, New York City, and San Francisco. We find that the type, timing, and relative importance of these experiences varied across categories. For example, experiences related to "Rejection and violence" were more often identified in childhood and in the past, whereas experiences related to "Gender-affirming medical interventions" were more often in adulthood and anticipated futures. Experiences related to "Community involvement," "Extracurriculars," "Gender exploration and revelation," and "Gender-affirming medical interventions" were labeled by respondents as relatively more important compared to other experiences, whereas experiences related to "Family of origin relationships," "Place of residence," "Rejection and violence," and "Sexuality" less important. These experiences were patterned according to the respondents' gender, birth cohort, race/ethnicity, and geographic location. In analyzing these lifeline data, we advance theoretical understandings of the salience of a variety of key experiences for transgender and nonbinary people at different points in the life course. Our life course approach provides empirical analyses of intra-individual processes over time for transgender and nonbinary people and provides insight into the usefulness of a lifeline method for life course studies more generally as it draws attention to within-person assessments of the distribution and importance of events over the course of a lifetime.

Childbearing Biographies as a Method to Examine Diversity and Clustering of Childbearing Experiences: A Research Brief.

Due to increasing heterogeneity in if, when, and under what conditions women have children, the timing, spacing, and other demographic aspects of childbearing have drastically changed in the US over the past century. Existing science tends to examine demographic aspects of childbearing separately, creating an incomplete understanding of how childbearing patterns are distributed at the population level. In this research brief, we develop the concept of childbearing biographies to emphasize that multiple childbearing characteristics cluster together. We analyze nationally representative US data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79; N=4,052). Using eight childbearing variables (e.g., age at first birth, number of children, whether unmarried at any birth), we use Mixed-Mode Latent Class Analysis (MM-LCA) and identify five classes, or childbearing biographies: (1) early compressed childbearing, (2) staggered childbearing, (3) extended high parity childbearing, (4) later childbearing, and (5) married planned childbearing. A childbearing biography approach highlights the increasingly heterogeneous contexts of parenthood today, showing how women with similar characteristics around one aspect of childbearing (e.g., early age at first birth) can also be highly divergent from each other when taking into consideration other childbearing characteristics. In showing this complexity, we highlight that a childbearing biography approach has the potential to shed new light on widening inequality among contemporary midlife women, with implications for aging and population health and well-being.

Childbearing Biographies and Midlife Women's Health.

OBJECTIVES: We introduce a "childbearing biography" approach to show how multiple childbearing characteristics cluster in ways significant for midlife health. METHODS: We analyze the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79; N = 3992) using mixed-mode Latent Class Analysis with eight childbearing variables (e.g., age at first birth, parity, birth spacing, and mistimed births) to identify how childbearing biographies are associated with midlife health, adjusting for key covariates-including socioeconomic status (SES) and relationship history. RESULTS: We identify six childbearing biographies: (1) early compressed, (2) staggered, (3) extended high parity, (4) later, (5) married planned, and (6) childfree. Childbearing biographies are strongly associated with physical health but not mental health, with differences primarily explained by SES. DISCUSSION: Different childbearing biographies are related to physical health inequalities above what is demonstrated by the typical use of one or two childbearing measures, providing a new perspective into the growing health gap among aging midlife women.

Support in Response to a Spouse's Distress: Comparing Women and Men in Same-sex and Different-sex Marriages.

Support for a spouse with psychological distress can be expressed in many different ways. Previous research indicates that support expression is shaped by gender, but we do not know much about how support within marriage is provided in response to a spouse's distress outside of a different-sex couple context. In this study, we analyze dyadic data from 378 midlife married couples (35-65 years; N = 756 individuals) within the U.S. to examine how men and women in same- and different-sex relationships provide support when they perceive that their spouse is experiencing distress. We find women in different-sex couples are less likely to report taking care of their distressed spouse's tasks or giving their distressed spouse more personal time and space compared to women in same-sex couples and men. We also find that men in different-sex couples are less likely to report encouraging their spouse to talk compared to men in same-sex couples and women. Being personally stressed by a spouse's distress is positively associated with providing support to that spouse, whereas feeling that a spouse's distress is stressful for the marriage is negatively associated with providing support. This study advances understanding of gendered provisions of support in response to psychological distress in marriage, moving beyond a framing of women as fundamentally more supportive than men to a consideration of how these dynamics may be different or similar in same- and different-sex marital contexts.

The development of gendered health-related support dynamics over the course of a marriage.

For married adults with chronic illnesses or functional limitations, informal support from a spouse is often essential for their well-being, but support around health issues is not confined to later life. Attention to processes of support throughout the entire intimate relationship can provide insight into support dynamics in later life. Additionally, health-related support from a spouse tends to be gendered with women providing more support. Our analysis of relationship timeline interviews with 23 older adult couples demonstrates that these gendered support dynamics develop and are sustained throughout a marriage. We identify three patterns of support: (1) acknowledged gender inequality in support in which women readily provided support when their husbands had health issues but men provided support less consistently for their wives' health issues throughout the relationship; (2) mutual support in which both spouses provided support for the other whenever there were health needs; and (3) independence, in which men and women provided relatively little support to one another, viewing each other as responsible for their own health and well-being. These support patterns are established early within marriages and continue as health issues intensify. These patterns of spousal support are linked to broader systems of gender inequality and societal messages about gender. Our study moves away from conceptualizations of support provisions around health issues as only being situated in later life. We instead show how dynamics of support are developed and normalized throughout a marriage and suggest that spousal support studies should take into account long-term marital dynamics.

Intergenerational Coresidential Patterns by Young Adult's and Their Mother's Mental Health and Substance Use.

Intergenerational coresidence is at a 30-year high. Studies find that economic, familial, and demographic factors shape the likelihood of this arrangement. We use NLSY79 and NLSY79YA data (2000-2014; N = 3,092) to examine how the mental health and substance use of both adult children and their mothers matter for coresidential biographies, estimating risks of moving out of and returning to their mothers' households. Adult children who drink, smoke, or have more depressive symptoms, or whose mothers drink or smoke, are more likely to leave their mother's household; adult children with more depressive symptoms and who smoke are more likely to return. Our findings show that children's and mothers' health are key determinants of coresidential patterns, suggesting that it is not just family arrangements that impact health but health that impacts family arrangements. As intergenerational coresidence increases, researchers should continue to look beyond economic, familial, and demographic determinants of coresidence to health dynamics.

The Gender-as-Relational Approach for Theorizing About Romantic Relationships of Sexual and Gender Minority Mid- to Later-Life Adults.

We deploy the "gender-as-relational" (GAR) approach to enhance the study of the long-term romantic relationships of sexual and gender minority mid- to later-life adults. The GAR approach states that gender within relationships is shaped by three key factors: own gender, partner's gender, and the gendered relational context. This approach highlights that the relationship dynamics of men, women, and gender nonconforming people are highly diverse, reflecting that gender is a social construct formed within interactions and institutions. We explicate how GAR can reorganize the study of sexual and gender diversity in three research areas related to aging and relationships-caregiving, marital health benefits, and intimacy-and discuss theory-driven methods appropriate for a GAR research agenda. A GAR framework reorients research by complicating taken-for-granted assumptions about how gender operates within mid- to later-life romantic relationships and queering understandings of aging and romantic relationships to include experiences outside of heteronormative and cisnormative categories.

"Go See Somebody": How Spouses Promote Mental Health Care.

This study considers when, whether, and how spouses encourage professional mental health care by analyzing qualitative data from 90 in-depth interviews with gay, lesbian, and heterosexual spouses. Findings show that a majority of spouses are engaged in promoting each other's mental health care but that the strategies used to promote care vary by gender and the gender composition of the couple. The majority of gay men and lesbian women promote care by framing mental health problems as largely biochemical, fixable only with professional care or medicine, and work to destigmatize this care. Lesbian women uniquely emphasize the influence of a spouse's symptoms on marital quality as a reason to pursue care. Some heterosexual women and men also report seeing their spouse's mental health care as something for them to deal with on their own and thus do not encourage care. This study has important implications for researchers looking to understand why some individuals seek mental health care and others do not and provides policymakers insight into mental health interventions via spouses.

The Psychological Toll of Emotion Work in Same-Sex and Different-Sex Marital Dyads.

Objective: This study considers how the provision of daily emotion work may affect the psychological well-being of the emotion worker, and how this linkage may vary for men and women in same- and different-sex marriages. Background: Emotion work-work intended to bolster a spouse's well-being by reading and managing the spouse's emotional needs-is common within marital relationships and often gendered, with women more aware of and concerned with emotion work than men. Yet, the psychological cost of performing emotion work is largely unexplored. Method: This study relies on 10 days of daily experiences data from spouses in same- and different-sex marriages (n = 756 individuals). Mixed effects multilevel regression modeling is used to examine how the provision of emotion work is associated with the emotion workers' psychological well-being. Results: Providing emotion work is inversely associated with emotion workers' psychological well-being, especially when provided for a spouse with elevated depressive symptoms. These estimated effects are generally similar for men and women but greater for those married to a man than for those married to a woman, whether in a same- or different-sex marriage. Conclusion: Emotion work appears to adversely affect the worker's own psychological well-being, especially when a spouse has elevated depressive symptoms and when one's spouse is a man. These results point to the importance of dyadic approaches and consideration of gendered relationship dynamics of same- as well as different-sex couples in studies of emotion work and other marital processes.

How Families Matter for Health Inequality during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

We theorize that social conditions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic have the potential to increase the importance of families for health and widen existing inequalities. We suggest three primary tenets important for understanding families and health during COVID-19. First, risks of specific COVID-19 outcomes and other health problems are unevenly distributed across families. Second, how families impact health during the COVID-19 pandemic is conditional on public policies, organizational decisions, and concurrent events. Third, many health inequalities driven by racism, sexism, classism, and other oppressive societal force are amplified during COVID-19, but the extent to which this is occurring is shaped by families and by the public policies, organizational decisions, and concurrent events that also impact families and health. As health disparities continue to emerge from this pandemic, we call on researchers and policy-makers to pay attention to the multiple ways that families matter.

Family Matters: Research on Family Ties and Health, 2010-2020.

Family ties have wide-ranging consequences for health, for better and for worse. This decade review uses a life course perspective to frame significant advances in research on the effects of family structure and transitions (e.g., marital status), and family dynamics and quality (e.g., emotional support from family members), on health across the life course. Significant advances include the linking of childhood family experiences to health at older ages, identification of biosocial processes that explain how family ties influence health throughout life, research on social contagion showing how family members influence one another's health, and attention to diversity in family and health dynamics, including gender, sexuality, socioeconomic, and racial diversity. Significant innovations in methods include dyadic and family-level analysis and causal inference strategies. The review concludes by identifying directions for future research on families and health, advocating for a "family biography" framework to guide future research, and calling for more research specifically designed to assess policies that affect families and their health from childhood into later life.