Journal of Family Issues

This study analyzes a couple-level (N = 581), longitudinal data set of employees to provide evidence about technology use over time, the factors that predict use, and the potential for a spouse to influence an individual's use. Although longitudinal usage patterns suggest a trend toward adoption and use of e-mail, the Internet, cell phones, and pagers over time, this trend toward continuing use is stronger for some technologies (e-mail, the Internet) than for others (cell phones, pagers). Furthermore, correlates of use differ by gender and the type of technology used. Last, technology use tends to be an individual-rather than couple-level phenomenon, with one exception. In the case of cell phone or pager use, husbands’ past use influences wives’ use 2 years later.

Focusing on social factors associated with increased depressive symptoms among working mothers living in poor urban neighborhoods, this study investigates the effects of welfare participation, employment conditions, and child care on women's emotional well-being. The authors use new data from the Philadelphia Survey of Child Care and Work. Hierarchical regression analyses reveal minimal effects of welfare participation on depressive symptoms. However, women's employment characteristics and child care problems were significantly related to emotional well-being. Interaction effects between child care and employment were also explored. Mothers who had concerns about child care were more likely to report depressive symptoms when they had good-quality jobs (higher wages) or when they had only one job or were not unemployed.

In recent years in the Netherlands, mothers’ labor participation has increased sharply. This article examines which factors influence mothers’ employment rates and the division of household and caring responsibilities between parents. From research among 1,285 women with young children, it appears that cultural factors rather than economic motives or institutional obstacles offer the most important explanation for whether they work or not. A culture of care dominates more among women with lower than higher education levels, which clarifies the more limited labor participation of lower educated mothers. A comparison is also drawn between the various earner types of family. It appears that the one-and-a-half earner type of family with the man working full-time and the woman part-time is particularly popular among women with lesser education levels. However, for women with higher educations, the ideal is for both parents to work part-time, but for the time being, they have not yet been able to realize this.

The issue of child care is still widely debated, with some scholars arguing that children fare best in parental care, whereas others suggest center care may enhance children's development. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort of 1998 to 1999, the author demonstrates how the use of cross-sectional versus longitudinal analysis results in different conclusions regarding types of care. Cross-sectional analysis indicates that children who had been in center care the year prior to kindergarten exhibited advanced math and reading skills over their parental care counterparts but poorer peer-related social skills net of background controls. However, employing longitudinal analysis that controls for fall test scores of kindergartners and first graders shows that the cognitive effects of center care do not persist and that some social skills actually deteriorate. Longitudinal analyses more successfully isolate the effect of child care than do cross-sectional analyses, and models employing longitudinal methods suggest that children benefit less from the center care experience than previously thought.

This study addresses two questions: Is stepfamily formation associated with the likelihood that adolescents will initiate alcohol use, and if so, does this association differ by the type of single-parent families from which adolescents move or the type of stepfamilies to which they move? The author found that adolescents who moved to stepfamilies from single-parent families had an elevated risk of initiating alcohol use. A transition from a divorced single-parent family to a stepfamily is associated with an increase in alcohol initiation among boys, but a transition from an unwed single-parent family to a stepfamily is not. In contrast, girls who transition from an unwed single-parent family to a stepfamily show an elevated likelihood of initiating alcohol use, whereas those who transition from divorced single-parent families do not. Adolescents who move to cohabiting stepfamilies do not respond differently than do adolescents who move to married stepfamilies regardless of gender.

The present study was conducted to investigate differences in nurturant fathering, father involvement, and young adult psychosocial functioning among small samples of three nontraditional family forms. A total of 168 young-adult university students from three family forms (27 adoptive, 22 adoptive stepfather, 119 nonadoptive stepfather) completed retrospective measures of nurturant fathering and father involvement and measures of current psychosocial functioning. Results indicated that adoptive fathers were rated as the most nurturant and involved and that nonadoptive stepfathers were rated as the least nurturant and involved. In adoptive families, young adults’ ratings of paternal nurturance and involvement were strongly and positively correlated with their reports of current psychosocial functioning. The relationships of family form to reports of fathering appeared to be moderated by the child's age at father entry and the number of years of involvement in the child's life.