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As marriage rates continue to fall, policies that try to steer people into marriage through financial incentives are only hurting children

Income level, not family structure, has the biggest impact on parenting practices

Effect pronounced for boys, African Americans, and children in disadvantaged areas

Plan could virtually end child poverty

Black males experience extraordinary developmental risks as a consequence of the combined effects of male gender, poverty, and race. These risks are reflected in atypical behavioral and emotional development often observed in middle childhood. Not all Black males succumb to these risks. Whether or not they do is a function of exposure to adverse childhood events resulting from poverty, the experience of racial bias, and access to mitigating cultural resources and familial supports. Reducing household poverty and increasing access to early childhood programs, school‐based programs, and mentoring are promising interventions to increase the probability of positive outcomes.

The majority of research on African American adolescents raised in single-mother homes has focused on externalizing problems, with less attention to other facets of socio-emotional functioning. Using a compensatory resilience approach, the current study examined risk and protective factors at the family (maternal warmth, monitoring, psychological control) and youth (ethnic identity and religiosity) levels as predictors of depressive symptoms, hopelessness, and self-esteem among African American adolescents from single-mother homes ( n  = 193). Lower levels of psychological control, higher levels of monitoring, and higher levels of youth ethnic identity were associated with at least one of the outcomes, depressive symptoms, hopelessness, and self-esteem. In addition, self-esteem, but not hopelessness, mediated the associations between the family- and youth-level factors and youth depressive symptoms. The importance of targeting maternal psychological control and youth ethnic identity, as well as self-esteem, in intervention programs for African American youth from single-mother families is discussed.

Melissa Milkie is completing an NICHD-funded project on “Social statuses, schools, and children’s problems”

Dr. Milkie's research helps to reshape cultural frames regarding maternal time and children's well being

Liana Sayer starts a new Time Use Lab at the University of Maryland

Odis Johnson investigates how social issues affect education