Johnson and Easterling's original review was intended to underscore both the methodological challenges of disentangling the effects of parental incarceration from other adversities that often co-occur with parental incarceration and the need for conceptual models that can explain how and why parental incarceration may have unique effects on child…

In a recent "Journal of Marriage and Family" article, Johnson and Easterling (2012) reviewed research on the effects of parental incarceration on child well-being, focusing on the various conceptual frameworks linking parental incarceration and child well-being and the "important methodological and conceptual challenges related to selection bias"…

Growth in U.S. incarceration rates during the 1980s and 1990s prompted a body of research focused on understanding the diverse effects of incarceration on individuals, families, and communities. An area of particular interest has been how the incarceration of a parent may affect child well-being. Despite what appears to be converging evidence that…

This article addresses open questions about the nature and meaning of the positive association between marriage and well-being, namely, the extent to which it is causal, shared with cohabitation, and stable over time. We relied on data from the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 2,737) and a modeling approach that controls for fixed…

This study investigated religiousness and couple well-being as mediated by relational virtue and equality. Relational spiritual framework theory posits that religiousness is associated with couple well-being through relational virtues (e.g., forgiveness, commitment, and sacrifice). Theories of relational inequality postulate that religion…

Children in traditional families (i.e., married, 2 biological parents) tend to do better than their peers in nontraditional families. An exception to this pattern appears to be children from same-sex parent families. Children with lesbian mothers or gay fathers do not exhibit the poorer outcomes typically associated with nontraditional families.…

The authors investigated variations in reciprocity and the impact of reciprocity on well-being in a West African society. They hypothesized that household size and income diversity encourage reciprocity, which in turn enhances subjective well-being. In empirical testing of these hypotheses the authors used the data of the Core Welfare Indicators…

As the American imprisonment rate has risen, researchers have become increasingly concerned about the implications of mass imprisonment for family life. The authors extend this research by examining how paternal incarceration is linked to perceived instrumental support among the mothers of inmates' children. Results from the Fragile Families and…

The most widely used techniques for identifying the varying effects of stressors involve testing moderator effects via interaction terms in regression or multiple-group analysis in structural equation modeling. The authors present mixture regression as an alternative approach. In contrast to more widely used approaches, mixture regression…

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,898), this study investigated how the share, correlates, transition patterns, and duration of 3-generation households vary by mother's relationship status at birth. Nine percent of married mothers, 17% of cohabiting mothers, and 45% of single mothers lived in a 3-generation…

This paper advocates the adoption of a mixed-methods research design to describe and analyze ego-centered social networks in transnational family research. Drawing on the experience of the "Social Networks Influences on Family Formation" project (2004-2005; see Bernardi, Keim, & von der Lippe, 2007a, 2007b), I show how the combined…

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3,572) to examine relationships between maternal depression and mothers' time investments with their 5-year-old children in outings, trips to playgrounds or parks, time spent reading with the child, and time spent playing indoors with the child. We also examine whether mothers'…

The authors tested a series of models linking spanking and child social-emotional outcomes using a sample of 3,870 families from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. Spanking was measured by the number of times the focal child was spanked by the mother at ages 1, 3, and 5. Internalizing and externalizing symptoms were assessed using the…

Adolescents who share meals with their parents score better on a range of well-being indicators. Using 3 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (N = 17,977), the authors assessed the causal nature of these associations and the extent to which they persist into adulthood. They examined links between family dinners and…

Several million children currently live in transnational families, yet little is known about impacts on their health. We investigated the psychological well-being of left-behind children in four Southeast Asian countries. Data were drawn from the CHAMPSEA study. Caregiver reports from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) were used to…