Children from low-income families are more likely than those from higher income families to have poor social, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes. One approach that has helped parents and their young children is home visiting, which provides information, resources, and support to expectant parents and families with young…

Social institutions that have been around for thousands of years generally change slowly, when they change at all. But that's not the way things have been playing out with marriage and family since the middle of the 20th Century. Some scholars argue that in the past five decades, the basic architecture of these age-old institutions has changed as…

This is the fifth and final report of a longitudinal study examining the use of a comprehensive system of prevention and early intervention services in Palm Beach County, and how its use relates to the outcomes of children and families living in four targeted geographic areas (TGAs) with high rates of poverty, teen pregnancy, crime, and child…

The Children's Services Council (CSC) of Palm Beach County funded Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago to conduct a 6-year longitudinal study to examine the use and effectiveness of an array of services in the county in promoting school readiness and school success and improving family functioning among children and families most in need of…

The Children's Services Council (CSC) of Palm Beach County commissioned Chapin Hall Center for Children to conduct a longitudinal study to examine the effects of this service system on children and families. The goal of the longitudinal study is to describe the characteristics and needs of families the service system is intended to serve, how they…

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) is designed to provide detailed information on children's development, health, and early learning experiences in the years leading up to entry into school. The ECLS-B is the first nationally representative study within the United States to directly assess children's early mental and…

Current research suggests that a lack of involvement and a sense of powerlessness pervades many aspects of life for the inner city poor, including childrearing. In the late 1960's, as the movement to involve parents in their children's schools grew, an assumption took root that such participation would help alleviate parents' feelings of…

This report provides findings of an in-person survey of single parents in Ramsey County, Minnesota. The report is organized into seven chapters. Chapter 1 provides a current demographic, educational, and economic profile of single parents and examines whether the backgrounds of single parents relate to their present conditions. Chapter 2 describes…

Child-care arrangements of young working mothers were examined in a study using data from the Youth cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience. The data provided information on a sample of young men and women who were between the ages of 14 and 22 in 1979 and who have been interviewed annually since then. The data…

This study examined the relationship between parental childrearing behaviors and adolescent academic competence in 393 seventh-graders from rural two-parent families with similar educational and economic backgrounds. Data was collected from school academic records, adolescent and parent questionnaires, and observer ratings. Results indicate that…

This research brief presents some main findings from a study of employer-based support systems in the United States to help families meet their caregiving responsibilities, and focuses on the failure of existing policies to support caregiving responsibilities of low-income parents and women. The brief also presents policy alternatives to help…

This report presents a statistical portion of the child care arrangements working parents use for their preschoolers, and changes observed in those arrangements from 1988 to 1993. Data shown by the Survey of Income and Program participation suggest that: (1) Almost half of preschoolers are cared for by relatives while their mothers are at work;…

Noting that the great majority of Americans will become parents at some point in their lives, this report uses data from 13 federal or privately-collected nationally-representative studies or other data sources to present a comprehensive statistical picture of how mothers and fathers in America feel about parenting, how they parent, and how they…