Parental Employment and Child Cognitive Development


Book Description

This study investigates the relationship between parental employment and child cognitive development using data from multiple years of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Maternal labor supply during the first three years of the child's life is predicted to have a small negative effect on the verbal ability of 3 and 4 year olds and a substantial detrimental impact on the reading and math achievement of 5 and 6 year olds. Working during the second and third years appears to have less favorable or more deleterious consequences when the mother is also employed in the first year. The results are robust to the inclusion of controls for day care arrangements or paternal job-holding and there is some indication that early employment may be particularly costly for children in traditional' two-parent families. Finally, the data suggest that paternal and maternal employment have qualitatively similar effects, hinting at the importance of time investments by fathers. The overall conclusion is that previous research may have provided an overly optimistic assessment of the effects of parental employment on child cognitive development.




Parents' Jobs and Children's Lives


Book Description

Parents' Jobs and Children's Lives considers the effects of parental working conditions on children's cognition and social development. It also investigates how parental work affects the home environments that parents create for their children, and how these home environments influence the children directly. The theoretical underpinnings of the book draw from both sociology and economics; in addition, the authors make use of literature derived from developmental psychology. Theoretically eclectic, they rely on the personality and social structure framework developed by Melvin Kohn and his colleagues, on arguments regarding the importance of family social capital developed by James Coleman, as well as on ideas from Gary Becker's "new home economics" as guides to model specification. The empirical basis for Parcel and Menaghan's study is a series of multivariate analyses using data drawn from the 1986 and 1988 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey's Child-Mother data set. This data set matches longitudinal data on mothers, derived from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, with data on the children of these mothers born as of 1986. Children aged 3 to 6 were given age-appropriate developmental assessments every two years in order to assess the influence of parental work on short-term changes in their cognition and social behavior. The authors also devote considerable attention to the effects of fathers' work and family structure on the well-being of their children. Parcel and Menaghan's work brings evidence to bear on both the theoretical perspectives guiding the analyses and on current policy debates regarding the nexus of work and family.







Parenting Matters


Book Description

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.




Maternal Employment and Children’s Development


Book Description

In a review written in 1979, I noted that there was a paucity of research examining the effects of maternal employment on the infant and young child and also that longitudinal studies of the effects of maternal em ployment were needed (Hoffman, 1979). In the last 10 years, there has been a flurry of research activity focused on the mother's employment during the child's early years, and much of this work has been longi tudinal. All of the studies reported in this volume are at least short-term longitudinal studies, and most of them examine the effects of maternal employment during the early years. The increased focus on maternal employment during infancy is not a response to the mandate of that review but rather reflects the new employment patterns in the United States. In March 1985, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 49.4% of married women with children less than a year old were employed outside the home (Hayghe, 1986). This figure is up from 39% in 1980 and more than double the rate in 1970. By now, most mothers of children under 3 are in the labor force.




What Children Need


Book Description

What do children need to grow and develop? And how can their needs be met when parents work? Emphasizing the importance of parental choice, quality of care, and work opportunities, economist Jane Waldfogel guides readers through the maze of social science research evidence to offer comprehensive answers and a vision for change. Drawing on the evidence, Waldfogel proposes a bold new plan to better meet the needs of children in working families, from birth through adolescence, while respecting the core values of choice, quality, and work:,Allow parents more flexibility to take time off work for family responsibilities;,Break the link between employment and essential family benefits;,Give mothers and fathers more options to stay home in the first year of life;,Improve quality of care from infancy through the preschool years;,Increase access to high-quality out-of-school programs for school-aged children and teenagers.




The Effect of Maternal Employment and Child Care on Children's Cognitive Development


Book Description

This article develops and estimates a dynamic model of employment and child care decisions of women after childbirth to evaluate the effects of these choices on children's cognitive ability. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate it. Results indicate that the effects of maternal employment and child care on children's ability are negative and sizable. Having a mother that works full-time and uses child care during one year is associated with a reduction in ability test scores of approximately 1.8% (0.13 standard deviations). We assess the impact of policies related to parental leave and child care on children's outcomes.




Helping Low Birth Weight, Premature Babies


Book Description

Each year in the United States, 250,000 infants are born too soon, weighing too little. For these low birth weight, premature infants, the future is uncertain, since they are at risk for a variety of serious medical and developmental problems—including behavioral and learning disorders that may have damaging effects for the rest of their lives. The extent to which a comprehensive early intervention program could improve or prevent these adverse outcomes was examined in the Infant Health and Development Program, a randomized controlled trial involving almost 1,000 infants in eight cities in the United States. This book describes in detail the program, its research methodology, the progress of the program, and the results of the clinical trial. The program was administered by an interdisciplinary team composed of physicians, biostatisticians, child development specialists, and researchers from several disciplines. It was instituted upon the discharge of the infants from the neonatal nursery and was maintained for three years. One-third of the infants were randomly assigned to an intervention group, the remainder to a follow-up group. Infants in both groups received pediatric care and community referral services, but only those in the intervention group participated in a program that included extensive home visits, attendance at a child development center, and group meetings for parents. The results of the program proved to be clinically important; at age three, the children in the intervention group had significantly higher IQ scores, greater cognitive development, and fewer behavioral problems. The implications of the findings for public policy are equally important, for there is increasing interest in the prevention, early detection, and management of developmental disabilities in children, as evidenced by such legislation as the Education for All Children Act. Strategies to minimize the problems of low birth weight children, with their potential for long-term savings through the prevention of disabilities and their attendant costs, could have significant repercussions in such governmental areas as medical care, education, and social welfare.




Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8


Book Description

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.




Mother's Time Allocation, Child Care and Child Cognitive Development


Book Description

This paper analyzes the effects of maternal employment and non-parental child care on child cognitive development, taking into account the mother's time allocation between leisure and child-care time. I estimate a behavioral model, in which maternal labor supply, non-parental child care, goods expenditure and time allocation decisions are considered to be endogenous choices of the mother. The child cognitive development depends on maternal and non-parental child care and on the goods bought for the child. The model is estimated using US data from the Child Development Supplement and the Time Diary Section of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The results show that the productivity of mother's child-care time substantially differs by a mother's level of education. Moreover, the childcare time of college-educated mothers is more productive than non-parental child care. The simulation of maternity leave policies, mandating mothers not to work in the first two years of the child's life, reveals that the impact on the child's test score at age five is either positive or negative, depending on whether the leave is paid or not. The heterogeneous productivity of mothers' time leads to different allocation choices between child care and leisure: college-educated mothers re-allocate a larger fraction of their time out of work to child care than do the lower educated, while the opposite holds for leisure.