Suchergebnisse

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that nonmarital childbearing and marital dissolution were undermining the progress of African Americans. The author argues that what Moynihan identified as a race-specific problem in the 1960s has now become a class-based phenomena as well. Using data from a new birth cohort study, the author shows that unmarried parents come from much more disadvantaged populations than married parents. The author further argues that nonmarital childbearing reproduces class and racial disparities through its association with partnership instability and multipartnered fertility. These processes increase maternal stress and mental health problems, reduce the quality of mothers' parenting, reduce paternal investments, and ultimately lead to poor outcomes in children. Finally, by spreading fathers' contributions across multiple households, partnership instability and multipartnered fertility undermine the importance of individual fathers' contributions of time and money, which is likely to affect the future marriage expectations of both sons and daughters.

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that nonmarital childbearing and marital dissolution were undermining the progress of African Americans. The author argues that what Moynihan identified as a race-specific problem in the 1960s has now become a class-based phenomena as well. Using data from a new birth cohort study, the author shows that unmarried parents come from much more disadvantaged populations than married parents. The author further argues that nonmarital childbearing reproduces class and racial disparities through its association with partnership instability and multipartnered fertility. These processes increase maternal stress and mental health problems, reduce the quality of mothers' parenting, reduce paternal investments, and ultimately lead to poor outcomes in children. Finally, by spreading fathers' contributions across multiple households, partnership instability and multipartnered fertility undermine the importance of individual fathers' contributions of time and money, which is likely to affect the future marriage expectations of both sons and daughters. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

Sociologists have long recognized the importance of the family in social mobility and in the reproduction of poverty (Featherman & Hauser 1978, McLanahan & Sandefur 1994). More recently, they have begun to study the role of the state in these processes (Skocpol 1992, O'Connor et al 1999). Children depend on their parents to provide them with the resources they need to develop into healthy and successful adults. Parents, in turn, depend on their communities and on government to share the costs of raising children. Changes that undermine children's claims on parental resources or parents' claims on public resources are likely to have long-term negative consequences for society. As we enter the twenty-first century, two such changes are underway—an increase in nonmarital childbearing and a restructuring of the welfare state. Nonmarital childbearing, a trend that now affects one of three children born in the United States, undermines children's claims on fathers' resources (time and money). Welfare reform, which curtails welfare benefits and strengthens child support enforcement, undermines the claims of poor parents on public resources. These changes disproportionately affect families at the lower end of the income distribution, who have the highest rates of nonmarital childbearing and welfare receipt. In order to assess the full impact of these changes in the family and the state, sociologists need answers to several questions. First, they need to know more about the capabilities of the men and women who bear children outside marriage, especially the fathers. Second, they need a better understanding of the relationship between unwed parents and between parents and children. And third, they need to understand how welfare and child support policies affect parents' relationships

Over the past four decades, income inequality has increased and family structures have diversified. We argue that family structure has become an important mechanism for the reproduction of class, race, and gender inequalities. We review studies of income inequality and family structure changes and find a wide range of estimates of the correlation. We discuss how increases in income inequality may lead to increases in single motherhood, particularly among less educated women. Single motherhood in turn decreases intergenerational economic mobility by affecting children's material resources and the parenting they experience. Because of the unequal distribution of family structure by race and the negative effects of single motherhood, family structure changes exacerbate racial inequalities. Gender inequalities also increase as mothers incur more child-related costs and fewer fathers experience family life with children.

Objective. This article examines the effects of residential mobility on social connections that are likely to affect children's well‐being.Methods. We use data from a survey of participants in a housing experiment in Los Angeles, California to examine whether families that moved from public housing projects to other neighborhoods suffered short‐term losses of social capital.Results. Results indicate that residential mobility is associated with a reduced likelihood of parents talking with the parents of their children's friends. However, the effects of residential mobility on social capital are sensitive to adjustments for poverty levels in destination neighborhoods and factors that influence the probability of moving.Conclusions. Our results suggest that at least some of the negative effects of moving shown in previous studies may be due to negative selection. That is, families that move may be less successful at developing social ties than families that do not move. This finding suggests that future research on residential mobility needs to pay closer attention to factors that influence why and where families move.

The Fragile Families Study, a survey of 5,000 children representative of all non-marital births in US cities with populations of over 200,000, provides new evidence on the characteristics of unmarried parents and their children. Initial analyses reported in this article reveal that the typical unmarried mother is in her early twenties and cohabiting at the birth of her children. Almost one third are Hispanic and 51 per cent non-Hispanic black. The great majority of unwed parents are committed to each other and their children at the time of birth but most are poorly equipped to support themselves and their children.