A preschool child who is healthy and ready to learn demonstrates the ability to regulate their behavior and emotions, key social and emotional competencies, motor skills, health, and early learning skills. Because healthy development across these domains is more challenging for some children than for others, it is valuable to understand which…

Because families are the first nurturers and educators of their children, it is helpful for policymakers and other stakeholders to understand how family characteristics, the activities in which families engage, and their neighborhood circumstances are associated with preschool children's health and readiness for learning. The analyses presented in…

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this article examined how early maternal characteristics, an adolescent's family environment, and the adolescent's own attitudes and behaviors were associated with the odds of a nonmarital teenage birth among youth born to teenage mothers. Multivariate analyses indicated that these domains…

Longitudinal indicators are measures of an individual or family behavior, interaction, attitude, or value that are assessed consistently or comparably across multiple points in time and cumulated over time. Examples include the percentage of time a family lived in poverty or the proportion of childhood a person lived in a single-parent family.…

School-age children spend more time watching television than in any other activity except sleeping. Although some studies have suggested that watching educational programs can have positive effects on learning and behavior, numerous studies have found an association between television viewing and negative childhood outcomes. This study finds that…

In the minds of many people, poor families equal problem families. Indeed, that perception is not surprising, giving compelling evidence of the harsh effects that poverty can have on family life and child well-being. However, far less attention has been paid to the strengths that many poor families have and the characteristics that they may share…

Research studies based on statistics for the United States as a whole have documented differences in child and family well-being between children in low-income families and children in more affluent families and between children in single-parent families and children in two-parent families. However, researchers have not explored differences in…

To assess the level of family stress that a child experiences, several questions from the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) were combined to create a family stress index. The NSAF is a survey of more than 44,000 households representative of the United States as a whole and of 13 states, conducted as part of the Assessing the New…

This study used descriptive data from the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) Child Outcome Study to identify predictors of involvement among nonresident fathers of young children who receive welfare, and the relationship of father involvement to child outcomes. Participating were 693 mothers and children ages 3 to 5 in Fulton County,…

The National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) includes several questions that can be used to assess sociodemographic risk. The NSAF is a national survey of more than 44,000 families, conducted as part of the Assessing the New Federalism project. Measures used to form an index of risk are: (1) single parenthood; (2) four or more children living…

The 1997 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) asked parents of 6- to 17-year-olds several questions in order to assess the degree of turbulence or stability in a child's life. Turbulence was associated with several types of change, including moves and multiple school changes. The NSAF is a survey of more than 44,000 families, representing…

Often obscured by the multiple problems that plague some American families is the compelling evidence that many families have inner strengths that enable them to do a good job of raising their children and supporting one another. Because family strengths are not easily measured, they tend to be overlooked, resulting in a significant gap in the…