Overview: This study examines the complex effects on families when mothers reenroll in school at any level. The population of mothers in school--especially in college--is large and predominantly composed of women of color (Reichlin Cruse et al. 2019; Anderson 2022). Though there is a mounting emphasis on increased education and skills in the…

This study took a life course approach to examine associations among family income from birth to age 15, and adolescent health and well-being. Utilizing latent growth mixture modeling, we identified four distinct family income trajectories based on changes in low-income status (family income [less than or equal to] 200% of the federal poverty…

Background: Children and parents often rely on the support provided by non-parental adults such as extended family members. Expanding conceptualizations of social support beyond traditional nuclear family paradigms to include non-parental adults may be particularly relevant to identifying family strengths among economically disadvantaged and…

Mothers with infant children in the U.S. today are more educated than they ever have been. In 2011, more than six-in-ten (66%) had at least some college education, while 34% had a high school diploma or less and just 14% lacked a high school diploma, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. These benchmarks…

The consequences of divorce are pronounced for parents of young children, and cohabitation dissolution is increasing in this population and has important implications. The mental health consequences of union dissolution were examined, by union type and parental gender, using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study ("n" = 1,998 for mothers…

Understanding the financial well-being of single mothers who care for children with developmental disabilities is important to ensure that public policies can be effectively targeted to support these vulnerable families. The authors analyze data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to describe income poverty, asset poverty, income,…

Predictors of two types of cohabitation dissolution, dissolution with a continued romantic relationship and without (i.e., breakup), were examined using data from mothers cohabiting at the time of a nonmarital birth in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 1,624). Life tables indicated 64% of unions dissolved within 5 years; of…

Increasing fathers' involvement with their children has become a priority in recent years. Marriage promotion programs have been offered as the primary vehicles for increasing paternal involvement. Although marriage is likely to provide fathers with increased access and opportunity for paternal involvement, much less is known about the ways in…

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 781), I examined how father visitation for children born outside of marriage is affected by subsequent maternal relationship formation, focusing on the timing, type, and stability of maternal relationships. Results showed that fathers were most likely to have not seen their child…

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…

Working from a life course perspective, this study examined the links between mothers' fertility and relationship statuses and children's early school achievement and how these links varied by race/ethnicity and immigration status. Analyses of nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort revealed…

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…

Background: Having children with intellectual disability can be stressful for most parents. Currently there are very few studies focusing on parenting stress among mothers of children with Down syndrome (DS) in Asia. The present study examined the level of parenting stress experienced by Malaysian mothers of children with DS and evaluated the…

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.…

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Survey (N= 3,567), we examine the links between relationship status, relationship quality, and race and ethnicity in breastfeeding initiation. We consider four relationship types: married, cohabiting, romantically involved but not cohabiting (termed visiting), and nonromantically involved…