Constructing Parenthood for Stepparents: Parents by Estoppel and De Facto Parents Under the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution

It is astonishing both how little and how much we know about neutrinos. On one hand, the neutrino is the second most abundant particle in our Universe. Neutrinos may be created in the Sun, core collapse supernovae, cosmic rays, geological background radiation, supernova remnants and in the Big Bang. On the other hand, they have unimaginably small masses and are unwilling to react with their surroundings. Because of their abundance and their inclination to show us physics beyond the standard model of particle physics, neutrinos are hoped to carry yet unknown information of the Universe. However, it will take some effort and time to persuade the neutrinos to tell us what they know. Among the things we do not yet know of the neutrinos, is the -phase in the neutrino mixing matrix. If is in fact non-zero, neutrino flavour oscillations violate CP-symmetry. Also, if neutrino masses are introduced in the standard model through the See-Saw mechanism and if leptogenesis is a valid theory, CP-violation in neutrino oscillations could help explain why our Universe has no antimatter even though equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been created at the Big Bang. In this thesis, we investigate the flavour evolution of supernova neutrinos. We present the full Hamiltonian in the flavour basis for our system and identify how the different contributions affect the evolution and in which environment. We also present a theoretical motivation from [1, 2] as to how a non-zero -phase affects the flavour evolution and the final energy spectra. The analytical conclusion is that it has no impact under the assumptions made in our analysis. Thus, the -phase may not be measurable from supernova neutrinos

Differences in mental health between adults in stepfamilies and 'first families'

This study used longitudinal data from the UK National Child Development Study (N = 5844) to examine whether mental health measured at age 42 was associated with living in a stepfamily. Accounting for the potential selection of those with mental health problems at the onset of family formation (at age 23) into, or out of, stepfamilies we show that stepparents, their partners and particularly those in dual stepparent families all had worse mental health than parents in ‘first families’. It was also found that the mental health of men was worse if they were a stepparent than if they were the partner of a stepparent, while the reverse was the case for women

The institutionalization and pace of fertility in American stepfamilies

This paper compares nonparametric fertility rates for American women in stepfamilies and intact families using data from the June 1995 Current Population Survey. Results show that childbearing behaviors in stepfamilies resemble those in intact families. Regardless of stepfamily status, timings and levels of fertility for second and third marital births are identical for all women at the same lifetime parity. Fertility patterns are also similar for all first marital births, with the exception of a constant difference of three years in the pace of fertility. These findings are consistent with (1) the institutionalization hypothesis of stepfamily processes; (2) the hypothesis that lifetime parity is the primary determinant of female fertility; and (3) a speculation that women in stepfamilies attempt to catch up on lost fertility outside of marriage.fertility, nonparametric method, stepfamily, USA

Let Them Eat Wedding Rings (Second Edition)

In the five years since AtMP first published Let Them Eat Wedding Rings, government-funded marriage programs have grown explosively. Hundreds of programs were launched using federal, state and local government funding. Congress finally reauthorized TANF in February 2006. Despite protests by AtMP and others, Congress diverted $750 million from anti-poverty programs to marriage initiatives. In October 2006, 225 programs received 5-year funding awards worth almost$600 million. As observers who care deeply about fairness for all families, AtMP renews its call for the critical evaluation of government-funded marriage programs based on these three principles: The purpose of welfare is to reduce poverty.Individuals and families should be treated fairly regardless of their marital status. Policies designed to help children should support all the types of families in which children really live

Stepfamily Instability in Germany

Separations exert a detrimental impact on different areas of life in both adults and children. Having already experienced family instability, stepfamily members are at risk of experiencing even multiple family separations across the life course. To better understand stepfamily (in)stability in Europe, we study stability risks and facilitators between stepfamilies in Germany. We pursue Cherlin's perspective of stepfamilies' destabilizing lack of institutionalization. Specifically, we assess the impact of social control in terms of social and legislative conditions, (step)parents' social roles in terms of gender roles, and customs and conventions of family life in terms of union status. We apply event history analysis to a sample of 2,166 stepfamilies, 543 of which end up separated, from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). For example, we find that social and legislative liberalization might destabilize stepfamilies if it eases leaving unhappy relationships, and might stabilize stepfamilies if it alleviates stepfamilies' financial or caregiving burdens through de-familiarization. In contrast to stepfather families, stepmother families' stability appears to profit from stepmothers' and biological fathers' investment in stepfamily relationships to make up for noncomplying with gendered social roles. Overall, stepfamily stability appears to benefit from individual as well as societal pursuits of re-institutionalization

Childrearing responsibility and stepfamily fertility in Finland and Austria

We investigate the hypothesis that the propensity of a stepfamily couple to have a shared child is inversely related to the responsibility for rearing pre-union children. We compare effects of coresident pre-union children to those of nonresident, and effects of the woman’s children to those of the man’s. Shared children and stepchildren reduce the risk of a birth to a couple, and the reduction is larger for each shared child than for a stepchild. We found larger effects of coresident pre-union children than of nonresident children, and larger effects of a woman’s pre-union children than of a man’s. The differences were more pronounced in Austria where public support for childrearing and gender equality is lower than in Finland. Our study demonstrates that in addition to the number of pre-union children, coresidence and parentage of pre-union children also need to be considered in future fertility research.Austria, Finland, child rearing, family composition, fertility determinants

Stepparents: Social support systems and factors that contribute to role fulfillment

Forty-five stepparents responded to four scales: Perceived Social Support Friend Scale, Perceived Social Support Family Scale, Kansas Family Life Satisfaction Scale and the Kansas Parental Satisfaction Scale. The study found a significant positive correlation between family and friend support and stepparents\u27 role fulfillment

Reinvestigating Remarriage: Another Decade of Progress.

The article presents an overview of research and theory on remarriages and stepfamilies published in the 1990s. Remarriage is a term that encompasses several different types of relationships--both partners may be in a second marriage or a higher-order marriage. About 75 percent of divorced people remarry and serial remarriages are increasingly common. As people age, however, the divorce rates of first marriages and remarriages converge. The mean length of time between divorce and remarriage is less than four years. Men remarry at higher rates than do women and blacks and Hispanics remarry at lower rates than whites. A substantial proportion of U.S. births occurs in remarriages. Some first marriages create stepfamilies and stepparent-stepchild relationships. In 1992, 15 percent of all children in the U.S. lived with a mother and a stepfather. Although the presence of stepchildren is thought to lower marital quality for remarried adults, the effects are not always strong. A number of intrapersonal, interpersonal and societal-level explanations have been proposed for the greater instability of remarriages. Adolescent stepchildren also generally showed more externalizing behavioral problems than children living with both parents such as using drugs and alcohol, engaging in sexual intercourse, nonmarital childbearing and being arrested