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Nearly two-thirds of children in the U.S. live with two married parents. More than one in four lives with one parent only, and increasing numbers live with cohabiting couples. Statistically, children in the two latter types of families face more developmental risks, particularly economic stress. (Author abstract)
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This webpage describes the Family Networks Project, developed to assess the initial efficacy of Stepping Stones Triple P-Positive Parenting Program with parents of children below age two with developmental disabilities to strengthen families and prevent child maltreatment.
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Journal Article The children of Mexican immigrants face formidable barriers to achieving socioeconomic mobility due to their parents? precarious economic position and high rates of unauthorized status. In the short term, Mexican immigrants often coreside in extended household living arrangements with extended kin and unrelated friends and associates to shelter themselves from economic deprivation and insecurity of unauthorized status. Using individual-level Census data, the present study examines how family economic resources relate to household living arrangements. The results are consistent with various…
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Journal Article Fathers can make positive contributions to their children's well-being. However, involving the literature and this research indicate that fathers are much less likely to be engaged with child welfare services than mothers. This paper reports the findings of life story research with 18 fathers involved with child welfare. It focuses on these men's perspectives of fatherhood and their relationships with their children. Also, reactions to these fatherhood stories from father and service provider focus groups are examined. The findings challenge common perceptions of these fathers and highlight…
This report discusses the incidence of child sexual abuse in families in which children do not live with both biological parents and the silence surrounding the link between family breakdown and child sexual abuse in Australia. The need for a government-commissioned, anti-child sexual abuse public information campaign based on pro-marriage campaigns in the United States is emphasized. It begins with information on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and its lack of focus on familial sexual abuse that accounts for an estimated 70 to 80% of cases of child…
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Journal Article Fathers' interactions with their young children are understudied. Variations between families in the masculine nurturance of toddlers can be expected, depending on personal characteristics, gender, family structures, and cultural contexts in which they are situated. This is a qualitative study, focusing on probing the nature of the exchanges between female toddlers and their male caregivers, to gain an understanding of the dynamic nature of these interchanges. We observed four thriving 30-month-old girls in Italy, the UK, Peru, and Thailand, wherein filmed transactions between them and their…
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Journal Article In the past 20 years, social change and expectations for both maternal and paternal responsibilities have highlighted the need for services for families to better understand the role of a father in family relationships. In Australia, as well as internationally, there have been many contested understandings about what constitutes "good fathering" in research, social media and in the political sphere. More specifically, there has also been an emerging trend to understand the challenging task of recruiting and maintaining men's involvement in child and family services programmes, particularly…
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Journal Article Fathers' and mothers' views on mothers' satisfaction with paternal behaviour as well as the respective processes of origination were studied in 393 cohabiting couples from three different stages of the family life cycle. Data on paternal competence and the couples' relationship characteristics were included as predictors in multiple regression analyses, and the stages of the family life cycle were taken into account with multigroup regression analyses. Results showed that the mothers were more satisfied with paternal behaviour than the fathers thought the mothers were. Moreover, mothers were…
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Journal Article High rates of imprisonment among American fathers have motivated an ongoing examination of incarceration's role in family life. A growing literature suggests that incarceration creates material and socioemotional challenges not only for prisoners and former prisoners but also for their families and communities. The authors examined the relationship between fathers' incarceration and one such challenge: the housing insecurity of the mothers of their children. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,125) and a series of longitudinal regression models, they found…
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Journal Article This study describes a test of the Fathers and Sons Program for increasing intentions to avoid violence and reducing aggressive behaviors in 8- to 12-year-old African American boys by enhancing the parenting skills satisfaction and parenting behaviors of their nonresident fathers. The study included 158 intervention and 129 comparison group families. Structural equation model results indicated that the intervention was effective for improving fathers' parenting skills satisfaction, which was positively associated with sons' satisfaction with paternal engagement. Sons' paternal engagement…
