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More than 2 million American children have a parent incarcerated, making the consequences of parental incarceration for families a critical concern. A growing literature documents significant challenges not only among incarcerated men, but also among their spouses, partners, and children. Much remains to be learned about these experiences, however; and the data available for doing so are limited. In this article, we demonstrate how the quality of available data on paternal incarceration can be improved by supplementing a leading population-based survey of families with administrative records on criminal history from a state criminal justice agency. This administrative supplement provides only a low-end estimate of the extent of criminal justice involvement in our sample, but still increases the number of fathers identified with criminal histories by more than 20 percent. Building on such a supplement—in our current survey or future ones—could improve the identification of justice-involved fathers on a broader scale.

Summary Using data from a sample of RELATE (the RELATionship Evaluation Survey) respondents in stepfamilies (N = 560), this study examined the association between relationship quality (satisfaction and stability) and stepparenting issues. Although stepparenting issues can negatively impact romantic partners in stepfamilies, we suggest that high-quality communication may be a protective factor for individuals and couples stressed by their relationship with a nonbiological child. Findings Our results show that stepparenting issues are negatively associated with satisfaction and stability, but is partially mediated by clear-sending communication. Further, this mediation is stronger for women when considering satisfaction and for men when considering stability. Applications Our results show that stepparenting issues can be a strong sense of discord among romantic couples. Yet, they also indicate that clear-sending communication in relationships can substantially reduce the negative association of these issues with relationship quality. This finding suggests that therapeutic models that focus on emotionally focused couples therapy, structural family therapy, or address issues within the family system may be best for addressing common problems in stepfamilies.

AbstractObjectiveInformed by the family systems theory, the current study aimed to examine whether shared parental responsiveness between fathers and mothers with low income was associated with preschoolers' developmental outcomes.BackgroundBoth fathers' and mothers' parental responsiveness are key contributors to their young children's development. However, the ways in which fathers and mothers work as a system, as well as the role of shared parental responsiveness in child development, are not well understood, especially among families from low‐income contexts.MethodParticipants were from the Building Strong Families project, a racially diverse group of families from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds (N = 1,173). Fathers' and mothers' parental responsiveness were observed during father–child and mother–child interactions using the two‐bags task. Preschoolers' child behavior problems, prosocial behaviors, and receptive language served as developmental outcomes of interest. A common fate approach to dyadic analysis was employed to create shared responsiveness and individual residual variance latent variables, which the child outcomes were regressed onto. Moderation analysis by fathers' resident status was conducted.ResultsShared responsiveness positively predicted preschoolers' prosocial behaviors (Β = 0.33, p < .001) and receptive language (Β = 14.85, p < .001), above and beyond individual residual variance. Fathers' resident status did not moderate any of the examined relationships.ConclusionThere may be benefits to young children's development when mothers and fathers demonstrate shared responsiveness.Implications.Interventions serving families with low income could help strengthen mother–father shared responsiveness to promote child development.

Economic support programs for low-income families may play an important role in preventing child abuse and neglect. In the United States, childcare subsidies are provided to low-income families who meet certain requirements to offset the high cost of childcare. States have flexibility in setting many policies related to the provision of childcare subsidies, which results in a great deal of variation in how the programs operate between states. One policy dimension on which states vary is the number of employment hours required to receive childcare subsidies. A small body of work has begun to investigate the ways in which these state policy variations might relate to child maltreatment. Using 11 years of administrative data from the United States, the current study sought to estimate the relationship between two sources of variation in childcare subsidy policies: employment requirements and copayment size; and child neglect, physical abuse, and emotional abuse substantiations. The study found a nuanced relationship between required employment and neglect substantiations. Specifically, requiring some level of work was not associated with neglect substantiations, but requiring 30 hours of employment was associated with higher rates. The study did not find a relationship between copayment size and maltreatment substantiations.