We use state repeals of blood test requirements (BTRs) for a marriage license that occurred between 1980 and 2008 to examine the impact of changes in the price of marriage on the marriage decision. Using a within-group estimator that holds constant state and year effects and exploits variation in the repeal dates of BTRs across states, we find…

The epidemiology of anxiety traits was examined in a large sample of Italian preadolescent children, and 3,479 Italian nine-year-old subjects were enrolled. Anxious traits were observed in 10.5% of children. No significant gender differences were found, but children of separated couples presented a relative risk for anxious traits that was 50%…

Research into anxiety has largely ignored the dynamics of family systems in anxiety development. Coparenting refers to the quality of coordination between individuals responsible for the upbringing of children and links different subsystems within the family, such as the child, the marital relationship, and the parents. This review discusses the…

Much is known about how having a teenage mother influences children's outcomes, but the relationship between teenage fatherhood and children's health and development is less well documented. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort, the authors investigated how teenage fathers matter for children. They expected teenage fathers'…

Although researchers argue that single parents perceive more work-family conflict than married parents, little research has examined nuances in such differences. Using data from the 2002 National Study of Changing Workforce (N = 1,430), this study examines differences in home-to-job conflict by marital status and gender among employed parents.…

The question of how to best measure family processes so that longitudinal experiences within the family are accurately captured has become an important issue for family scholars. Using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,158), this article focuses on the association between trajectories of perceived supportiveness from biological…

In 2010, the declining birth rate among teenagers in the United States reached an historic low, and since 1991, the rate has declined 44 percent. Though this trend is promising, 372,252 teens nevertheless became mothers in 2010. That same year, 41 percent of all births were to unmarried women. Moreover, in 2010, 15 percent of the U.S. population…

Research on nonmarital fertility has focused almost exclusively on unmarried mothers, due in part to a lack of fertility information for men. Cycle 6 of the National Survey of Family Growth allows exploration of nonmarital fertility for both genders.The authors compare the characteristics of unmarried first-time mothers (n = 2,455) and fathers (n…

Promoting marriage, especially among low-income single mothers with children, is increasingly viewed as a promising public policy strategy for improving developmental outcomes for disadvantaged children. Previous research suggests, however, that children's academic achievement either does not improve or declines when single mothers marry. In this…

Nonmarital coparents, or adults who assist mothers with childrearing, play a significant role in the lives of African American single mothers and their children. Yet relatively little research has examined correlates of the quality of the coparenting relationship in these families. Using a broad ecological framework, the current study examined…

Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Survey, a birth cohort study, this study analyzes the effect of family structure on parenting for 3,402 mothers and 2,615 fathers. To address the problem of omitted variable bias, fixed effects methods are used to control for the presence of time-invariant unobserved…

Using cross-sectional data from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (N = 1,231), this study examines the relationship between grandchildren and their grandparents across early adulthood. Age is used as a proxy for change during the grandchild's life course and the influence of major life course characteristics is examined. Results indicate that…

The present study includes externalizing problems, internalizing problems, mother-adolescent relationship quality, and father-adolescent relationship quality in the same structural equation model and tests the longitudinal reciprocal association among all four variables over a 1-year period. A transactional model in which adolescents'…

Jane Waldfogel, Terry-Ann Craigie, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn review recent studies that use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to examine why children who grow up in single-mother and cohabiting families fare worse than children born into married-couple households. They also present findings from their own new research.…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the quality of life (QOL) and feeling of mothers of a child with autism. The QOL instrument was also used. A total of 104 participants completed all questionnaires, which included the Taiwan version of the WHOQOL-BREF. A final robust parsimonious structural model showed a positive…