Category Archives: Fragile Families

Incorporating Family Law into the Study of Nonmarital Families

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A guest post by Clare Huntington.

Thanks to the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study as well as other research, we are developing a rich body of knowledge about child outcomes in nonmarital families. What is missing from this growing body of research, however, is a discussion of the role of law in influencing these outcomes.

As I have elaborated elsewhere, family law is designed for married families. The family law system is far from perfect, but the legal rules, institutions, and norms generally help divorcing families restructure their lives in a way that encourages co-parenting and recognizes the potential contributions of both parents, financially and socially, to the rearranged family.

It is a very different story for nonmarital families. Family law’s rules, institutions, and norms do not map well onto family life that is not defined by marriage and have the potential to undermine relationships in these fragile families.

Beginning with legal rules, states give considerable power to unmarried mothers (power that, for married mothers, is shared with a spouse). When a child is born to unmarried parents, for example, the mother automatically gains sole custody of the child under many state laws. Without rights to custody, fathers see their children only if they are able to stay on good terms with the mothers of their children. This legal structure can exacerbate the phenomenon of maternal gatekeeping, which is well documented.

Family law also exacerbates acrimony between unmarried parents. Child support laws, which are relatively effective for divorcing families, impose unrealistic obligations on unmarried fathers, many of whom have dismal economic prospects. The failure to satisfy child support requirements fuels animosity between unmarried parents, many of whom are already experiencing difficulty co-parenting.

The basic institutions of family law are designed for marital families and simply do not work for nonmarital families. A married couple needs to go to court to end their relationship. When there, the court will ensure there is a clear custody or visitation order, specifying when each parent will see the child. The family will also have access to the court-based resources that help divorcing couples adjust to post-divorce life, such as the development of a detailed parenting plan, access to co-parenting classes, and so on.

By contrast, unmarried parents do not need the state to dissolve their relationship, so there is no reason to go to court, and most do not. This means that unmarried parents ending a relationship are left without an institutional structure to help them adjust to post-separation life. They do not have the benefit of a custody or visitation agreement, which can guard against maternal gatekeeping and which sends the message that both parents can and should be involved in the child’s life. They do not have the benefit of a detailed parenting plan, which can forestall conflict and set out clear expectations. And they do not have the benefit of court-based co-parenting classes, which can teach parents how to work together. Of course there are many ways in which nonmarital families differ from marital families, and I do not mean to suggest that unmarried fathers are likely to take on the joint custody role that many divorced fathers do. But the lack of an institution to help nonmarital families transition into a co-parenting relationships is a serious problem.

Finally, family law’s norms still reinforce traditional gender norms, with fathers as breadwinners and mothers as caregivers. Anachronistic for many married couples, these norms are starkly at odds with the reality of nonmarital family life. Marital norms thus deem unmarried fathers failures because they are not providing for their children economically. This undermines the place of fathers in the family by telling mothers and children that fathers are not acting as they should, and it undermines the social contributions that fathers can make.

In all these ways, family law weakens the already tenuous bonds that tie nonmarital families together.

It is essential to develop a more inclusive family law, better suited to the needs of both marital and nonmarital families. I outline such an approach in my recent article, Postmarital Family Law: A Legal Structure for Nonmarital Families, but let me give one example here. To address the problem that nonmarital families do not have an effective institution to help forestall conflict and transition into co-parenting, the United States should learn from Australia’s creation of Family Relationship Centres (FRCs) in 2006. FRCs offer free, readily accessible mediation services in the community, not the courts, to help unmarried parents move into co-parenting relationships. Built in centrally located areas such as shopping malls, they help separating couples develop a short-term plan for the child. The plans are not legally binding, but the idea is that by forging an agreement for the first year or two after the romantic relationship ends, a couple will get in the habit of working together. Then, as their lives inevitably change, they will be better positioned to adapt and continue their co-parenting. It is too soon to evaluate the long-term impact of the FRCs, but an initial assessment found that the FRCs have reached families that would not otherwise have gone to court and that most clients are satisfied with the services they received.

It is hard to establish definitively as a causal matter that the mismatch between family law and nonmarital family life contributes to worse outcomes for nonmarital children, but there is reason to believe that family law’s failures exacerbate the rocky transitions that contribute to poor child outcomes. At a minimum, as we deepen our empirical understanding of nonmarital families, the role of the law should be in the conversation.

Food Insecurity and Marital Status

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So far, in our blog series on the Gunderson and Ziliak Future of Children research report, we’ve outlined how 1 in 5 children in America are food insecure and how there are more reasons for this besides low household income. For example, caregivers’ mental and physical health, as well as child care arrangements, are contributing factors. Another piece of the puzzle is family structure.

I’ll start with some basic statistics. This table from childstats.gov shows the differences in the percentage of food-insecure households with children by family structure in 2011. Without taking any other contributing factors into account, female-headed households with no spouse present are more than twice as likely to be food-insecure than households headed by married couples (40 vs. 15 percent). Households headed by a father with no spouse present have a 28% prevalence of food insecurity, in between married couples and single mothers.

These differences aren’t surprising. But there’s more to the story.

Gunderson and Ziliak summarize several studies that give us clues about how marital status is related to food insecurity. For example, Balistreri found that children living with a single parent or with an unmarried parent in a more complex family (such as when the mother is cohabiting with a partner and there’s also a grandparent in the household) are at greater risk of food insecurity than children living with two biological parents or in a stepfamily. Also, Neeraj Kaushal and colleagues found that children living with their biological parents, whether married or cohabiting, have a lower risk of food insecurity. In contrast, Miller and colleagues found no substantive differences across family types after controlling for socioeconomic status and demographic characteristics. Regarding unmarried families, Nepomnyaschy and colleagues have shown that nonresident fathers’ consistent support, whether in cash or in kind, is associated with lower food insecurity; interestingly, inconsistent support was worse than no support at all.

Based on these findings, it’s important not to jump to conclusions about marital status and food insecurity. While married-couple households seem to be at least risk, this doesn’t mean a marriage certificate solves food insecurity, and that we should rush people into marriage. Family complexity, socioeconomic status, and nonresident fathers’ support also play a contributing role.

The Fragile Families Study and the work of Sara McLanahan, editor-in-chief of the Future of Children offer potential policy implications. In a recent article about unmarried parents, McLanahan and Jencks concluded that to prevent the negative outcomes associated with having children outside of marriage, women with lower socioeconomic status can be encouraged to postpone having children, giving them time to mature and increase their education and earnings. By extension, since women aren’t likely to marry men with poor earning capacity, men need to increase their capacity to provide for a family. Initiatives such as the promotion of effective birth control and education access seem promising. For currently unmarried families, Nepomnyaschy’s article underscores the importance of consistent child support in reducing the risk of childhood food insecurity.

Rising from a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Health

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Sara McLanahan, Editor-in-Chief of Future of Children, along with several colleagues, recently prepared a policy report published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that describes children’s exposure to violence in the Fragile Families Study (see the Future of Children Fall 2010 volume to learn more about Fragile Families). The report examines neighborhood violence, intimate partner violence, and harsh parenting, and finds that these types of violence are endemic and interrelated. An implication of these findings is that we need to tackle all these kinds of violence simultaneously, rather than in isolation. The authors point out, for instance, that reducing harsh parenting practices of mothers who experience domestic violence and are worried about their child’s safety won’t be as effective as reducing harsh parenting while also taking on the other problems.

What’s preventing us from achieving this vision?

Part of the problem, as the policy report points out, is that our efforts to combat violence could be more holistic. In other words, there might be a number of specialized programs working on different types of violence within the same community, and yet there can be a disconnect in communication and coordination between these well-meaning efforts. This disconnect warrants consideration.

To gather ideas from stakeholders on how to “break down the silos” between specialized efforts, RWJF has provided a discussion forum led by Senior Program Officer Martha Davis, along with a dialogue on RWJF’s LinkedIn Leadership Network. In the discussion threads, a common theme I noticed from several community leaders was that we should use common needs as a way to build relationships that cross program boundaries. The proposition that all stakeholders–such as prevention, intervention, community services and government–should come together, trust one another, share information and resources, and work together on objectives seems promising.

As a social worker, I often wonder how ideas and research can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. With this in mind, I recently connected with Martha and discussed the bigger picture. What I learned from our conversation was that we can all catch RWJF’s vision of a culture of health in our communities–part of which is that all children will be able to grow up in safe and nurturing environments at home, in the neighborhood, and at school. And that all children will have a real chance from the very beginning to develop to their full potential as individuals. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, the President of RWJF, describes this vision in her 2014 President’s Message. I’m excited by the challenge to promote a culture of health.

I would like to invite you to join the conversation. Read the policy report and comment below to share your ideas. Tell us about any programs or policies you believe are making a difference that we can learn from, how you think we can move from a culture of violence to a culture of health, or anything else you think can be part of the solution for improving environments for children and their families.

Policy Prescriptions to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

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Most teens would probably say they don’t want to become pregnant–in fact 87% of teen pregnancies in 2001 were reportedly unintended (see Figure 1). Even though there have been tens of thousands of teen pregnancies in recent years, teen births in the US have actually declined over the last 20 years, from 61.8 live births per 1,000 females aged 15-19 years in 1991 to 29.4 in 2012. This trend, which is due to factors that include teens making more informed decisions regarding their sexual health, is encouraging and suggests we can continue to make progress in preventing teen pregnancies.

First, we need to understand what makes teens more likely to get pregnant. Isabel Sawhill, Adam Thomas, and Emily Monea, in the Future of Children, outline several plausible explanations including cultural norms of increased acceptance of premarital sex and having children outside of marriage, a lack of positive alternatives to single motherhood, an attitude of fatalism, the high cost and limited availability of contraception, lack of knowledge about contraception and reproductive health, and inconsistent or incorrect use of contraception. The authors point out that these explanations generally fall into the categories of motivation, knowledge, and access.

Next, we can examine possible solutions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released a Vital Signs brief outlining what the federal government, health care professionals, parents/caregivers, and teens can do to prevent teen pregnancy. What I like about the CDC’s suggestions is that they start where the teen is and show how adults can support teens’ healthy development. For example, professionals can encourage teens to delay sexual activity but should also encourage sexually active teens to consider the most effective methods of birth control. Parents can know where their teens are and what they are doing (isn’t there an app for that?), especially after school, and talk with their teens about sex.

Finally, are programs that promote these types of solutions worth the cost? Sawhill and colleagues, in their Future of Children article, conducted simulations of the costs and effects of policy initiatives that encouraged men to use condoms (motivation), discouraged teen sexual activity and educated participants about proper contraceptive use (knowledge), and expanding access to Medicaid-subsidized contraception (access). All three had good benefit-cost ratios, suggesting they are excellent social investments that can actually save taxpayer dollars. For more information on how to prevent teen pregnancy and unintended pregnancies in general, see the Fragile Families volume of Future of Children.

Who Needs Fathers?

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With many children being raised by single mothers today, are fathers becoming dispensable or non-essential? Is child rearing more about the quality of parenting than who provides it?

Not necessarily. In a systematic review of published research on the effects of fathers’ absence on children, Future of Children Editor-in-Chief Sara McLanahan and colleagues found that the most rigorously designed studies find negative effects on child wellbeing. The strongest evidence relates to outcomes such as high school graduation, children’s social-emotional adjustment, and mental health in adulthood.

But an important consideration is the nature of the parents’ relationship. In the Fragile Families issue of Future of Children, Robert I. Lerman describes how the capacities and contributions of unwed fathers fall short of those of married fathers, but this varies by the kind of relationship the father has with the child’s mother. Clearly, father-child relationships are crucial, but the quality and stability of these relationships are at risk in fragile families.

Phillip A. Cowan, Carolyn Pape Cowan, and Virginia Knox consider how to tailor existing couple-relationship and father-involvement interventions, which are traditionally intended for married couples, to the needs of unwed parents in fragile families. The authors emphasize that improving the parental relationship, regardless of whether the parents live together, will in turn have a positive effect on fathers’ involvement. Ultimately, improving the parental relationship might also be among the most promising mechanisms of promoting marriage, which in turn could be an important component of reducing family poverty and improving child wellbeing in fragile families. Fathers are needed, and some fathers could use a little help.

Future of Children will return to the topic of parental relationships and the science of marriage with a full issue dedicated to the subject in Fall 2015.

Reducing the Risk of Parental Incarceration

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To reduce children’s exposure to the negative effects of having a parent incarcerated (for example, family financial strain, health and social problems, housing insecurity, etc.), Future of Children authors Bruce Western and Christopher Wildeman urged policymakers to limit prison time and provide effective drug treatment for nonviolent drug offenders. In line with this call, Attorney General Eric Holder recently announced that the Justice Department would stop perusing mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain nonviolent offenders and promote drug-treatment alternatives to incarceration. The changes, effective immediately, should help to reduce the prison population and the number of children exposed to incarceration.

With about half the current prison population meeting the criteria for drug dependence or abuse, effective drug treatment for prisoners and parolees is a serious concern. As the incarceration rate begins to decline, thousands of men and women will be sent back into their communities, and many will need substance abuse treatment. Western and Wildeman report that prisoner reentry programs have been found to reduce recidivism by connecting ex-prisoners to substance abuse treatment services as well as education and employment opportunities.

Policymakers and practitioners should also focus on early contact with the criminal justice system. Laurie Chassin notes that substance abuse disorders are common among adolescents in the juvenile justice system and underscores the need for effective screening methods so that youth can be redirected away from the juvenile and criminal justice systems as early as possible. She highlights the role of the youth’s social environment and mental health and finds evidence in favor of family-based treatment models.

Limiting prison time, providing effective drug-treatment for offenders and ex-prisoners, and identifying and addressing substance-use disorders early on should help to lower the proportion of children exposed to parental incarceration. For more on this topic, see the Future of Children issues on Fragile Families and Juvenile Justice.

Family Relationships Following the Great Recession

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Research from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study suggests that stress or uncertainty about external circumstances can impact family relationships. One recent study by Dohoon Lee, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Sara McLanahan, Daniel Notterman, and Irwin Garfinkel finds that mothers used more harsh parenting practices, such as corporal punishment, following the Great Recession. Moreover, macroeconomic conditions like consumer sentiment (that is, how people feel generally about the economy), rather than actual conditions (for example, local unemployment rate), are associated with harsh parenting.

Findings from another study suggest that macroeconomic stress has caused couples to delay or forego separation or divorce, especially among those hardest hit by the recession. Based on research presented in the Future of Children suggesting positive outcomes of marriage for children, such a finding could have good implications for low-conflict families but serious consequences for families experiencing violence or abuse.

Future of Children authors Philip A. Cowan, Carolyn Pape Cowan, and Virginia Knox explain that some low-income family intervention programs have begun to address how parents and partners can cope with the stress and uncertainty caused by external circumstances such as a dragging economy. The authors highlight one such program that has had encouraging early results. Participants in the Supporting Healthy Marriage project, a yearlong marriage and relationship education program for couples with children, report less abuse, more positive communication, and greater marital happiness than control-group counterparts.

With the proportion of children born to unmarried mothers at more than 40 percent, similar programs for unmarried couples with children are being evaluated. One such project called Building Strong Families found little evidence of relationship quality improvement among participants, but Cowan and colleagues indicate that more analyses are needed to understand these findings. Research on the challenges that unmarried families face can be found in the Future of Children issue on Fragile Families. Also see our issue The Next Generation of Antipoverty Policies.

From Prison to Postsecondary Education

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For every three people enrolled in a postsecondary institution, one person is under correctional supervision (incarcerated, on parole, or on probation). College has been part of the American Dream for decades, but prisoners and parolees have for the most part been ignored in discussions on improving college enrollment and completion rates.

Most high school students would like to achieve some sort of postsecondary education, but many leave high school unprepared for college work. This may be especially true for young adults involved with the criminal justice system, who are more likely to be from poor, racial-ethnic minority, or otherwise disadvantaged backgrounds. Indeed, education levels among the correctional population are much lower than among the general population. Some evidence suggests that increasing educational attainment among offenders may effectively reduce recidivism, but few studies have rigorously examined how postsecondary education affects the correctional population.

The Pathways from Prison to Postsecondary Education Project, recently launched by the Vera Institute of Justice, “seeks to demonstrate that access to postsecondary education, combined with supportive reentry services, can increase educational credentials, reduce recidivism, and increase employability and earnings.” The initiative will take place in three states over five years, and evaluations will be conducted by the RAND Corporation. At least one of the states, New Jersey, already has correctional postsecondary education programs in place, including Princeton University’s Prison Teaching Initiative.

The Future of Children issue on Postsecondary Education highlights the dramatic changes that are taking place in institutions of higher education and the students who attend them. As policymakers and educators make efforts to increase enrollment and improve program quality and completion, they should not forget the 7 million people under correctional supervision and what access to college for them might mean for their families and the nation as a whole.

Literacy for Incarcerated Fathers and Their Children

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Last week’s launching of the Digital Public Library of America shows that the landscape of literacy in the US is changing. As technology advances rapidly, educators and researchers should seek new ways to use it effectively, both in school and in the home, to improve literacy among children and families. Future of Children author Jane Waldfogel explains that parents play a major role in children’s literacy both early on and throughout the school years. The value that parents place on reading and the degree to which they provide reading materials can make the home environment more or less conducive to literacy. Reading with children and discussing what they are reading are particularly helpful. Parents also boost literacy when they monitor and help with schoolwork, participate at school, and encourage children to read during the summer.

Since the Prison Boom, many parents – especially fathers – have been locked up and thus unable to provide such support to their children, placing these children at an even greater disadvantage. However, research by Future of Children author Kathryn Edin and colleagues shows that for some fathers, particularly those with severe substance use problems, prison may serve as a time to rehabilitate and even rebuild bonds with children. A crucial part of this process is education; the U.S. Department of Education reports, “To the extent that prisons are intended as venues for rehabilitation, education has an important role in prison operations. Today, over 90 percent of the federal and state prisons and over 80 percent of private prisons offer some form of educational programs to inmates.” The hope is that, as these fathers are released, the education they received while incarcerated will not only make them more employable, but will give them necessary tools to create favorable environments for their children’s literacy.

Supporting men and fathers in this reentry process is a major focus of collaborations between prison and public libraries, which some argue can help ex-offender fathers to overcome information gaps, such as the digital divide. As WNYC reports, many fathers being released from prison will need to catch up on technology for job seeking and for day-to-day life. In addition, these fathers will not be equipped to give their children adequate opportunities to learn to use technology. Gina Biancarosa and Gina Griffiths find that disadvantaged students are less likely to use technology in sophisticated ways or with adult guidance. To help narrow the gap, they argue that schools should choose and incorporate evidence-based tools for literacy instruction and systematic support for effective use of e-reading technology. One could ask if library partnerships and other community efforts targeting reentering parents could do the same. For more on this topic see the Future of Children issues on Literacy Challenges and Fragile Families.

To Reduce Delinquency, Prevention is Key

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As a New York Times editorial noted recently, although the number of incarcerated juveniles is at a 35-year low, the US continues to lead developed nations in the number of young people it locks up. Incarceration has serious consequences for ex-offenders, including poorer health, lower earnings, and family breakup; thus many states have begun investing in more effective strategies to reduce delinquency. As Peter Greenwood explains in the Future of Children, “The most successful programs are those that prevent youth from engaging in delinquent behaviors in the first place.”

The Future of Children says that the best evidence points to early intervention, including home-visiting programs aimed at pregnant teens and their at-risk infants, early education programs for disadvantaged young children, and school-based initiatives to prevent drug use and dropping out. Moreover, community-based programs that focus on the family and improving parenting skills have been shown to effectively deter young offenders from future involvement with the justice system.

In the Washington Post this week, Future of Children Senior Editor Ron Haskins urged politicians, educators, community leaders, ministers and parents to teach young people that the decisions they make as they transition to adults will greatly influence their circumstances later in life. He cited research showing that of US adults who finish high school, get a full-time job, and wait until age 21 to get married and have children, only about 2 percent live in poverty and about three quarters have joined the middle class. Thus, investing more in prevention than incarceration should more effectively reduce delinquency and improve life outcomes for young adults. See the Future of Children issues on Juvenile Justice, Fragile Families, and School Readiness to learn more about this topic.