Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disadvantage, Residential Stability, and Perceptions of Social Support among New Mothers

Neighborhoods are important sites for the formation and development of social ties. In theory, living in a disadvantaged neighborhood may be associated with lacking social support. We investigate this hypothesis among mothers of young children using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study (N=4,211). We find that mothers in disadvantaged neighborhoods, compared with their counterparts in better neighborhoods, are less likely to have a safety net of friends or family to rely on for monetary or housing assistance. We also find that residential stability is associated with stronger personal safety nets. For mothers who move when their children are young, moving to a better neighborhood seems to have little effect on their perceived instrumental support, but moving to a more disadvantaged neighborhood is associated with a decline in instrumental support.

Family Structure and Early Child Health: Policy Implications and Directions for Future Research

Invited commentary on Family Matters: Links Between Family Structure and Early Child Health

Paternal incarceration has complicated and countervailing effects on family life

With more than 2 million citizens incarcerated, the United States currently has the largest prison population in the world. Although more than 1.7 million children currently have a parent behind bars, the actual effects of imprisonment on families are not well understood. Drawing on her current research, Kristin Turney challenges the notion that male incarceration is universally negative for families, painting, instead, a complicated picture of how fathers’ imprisonment impacts family relationships

Growing up with Depressed Parents: Social Pathways to Disadvantaged Outcomes in Early Childhood

Theoretical perspectives suggest that depression can have particularly detrimental consequences for the family system, and children of depressed parents may have an increased risk of negative outcomes throughout the life course. In this dissertation, I use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing survey, a longitudinal study of nearly 5,000 new and mostly unmarried parents in 20 U.S. cities, to examine the consequences of parental depression for children’s cognitive and behavioral outcomes in early childhood. The findings presented in this dissertation suggest that parental depression is consequential for young children, and that parental depression may have wide-ranging consequences for aspects of the broader family system including maternal parenting behaviors, relationship quality, and social support. This dissertation extends our understanding about the consequences of parental depression in several ways. First, I consider the pathways through which maternal depression matters for children, as little is known about the factors that mediate or moderate this association. Second, I advance our knowledge of child wellbeing by examining the dynamic nature of parental depression, and how children fare when their parents move in and out of depressive episodes. Finally, I use a representative sample of parents and their children, which allows me to pay particular attention to the importance of contextual circumstances in altering the association between depression and children’s outcomes. Understanding the variation inherent in the outcomes of children of depressed parents is particularly important, as impairments in early childhood may place children on trajectories to experience further disadvantage throughout adolescence and adulthood

Parental Depression and Children’s Developmental Outcomes: The Mediating Influence of Parenting Behavior

This paper uses data from a subsample of the Fragile Families and Child Well-being survey (N = 1,799) to examine the relationship between parental depression and children’s developmental outcomes. Results suggest that parental depression when children are 12 months old, particularly maternal depression, leads to less favorable behavioral but not cognitive outcomes among children. Maternal parenting behaviors including discipline, neglect, and parenting stress are also associated with children’s behavior, and attenuate the negative consequences of episodic but not chronic maternal depression. This research extends past literature by using a large, non-clinical, and representative sample; by incorporating reports of both parents; and, importantly, by elucidating mechanisms through which depression matters for children.Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study, mental health, depression, children’s behavioral outcomes, transition to parenthood

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Prevalence and correlates of stability and change in maternal depression: evidence from the Fragile Families And Child Wellbeing Study.

Children of depressed mothers have impaired cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes from infancy through adulthood, and are especially at risk when maternal depression persists over multiple years. But there are several important limitations to our current descriptive knowledge about maternal depression, especially depression among unmarried mothers. Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a recent cohort of children born in urban areas to mostly unmarried parents (N = 4,366), was used to examine the prevalence and correlates of maternal depression when children were about 1, 3, 5, and 9 years old. Results show that, at any given survey wave, between 16% and 21% of mothers reported depression. Nearly two-fifths (38%) of mothers reported depression at least once during the eight-year period, and 7% reported persistent depression (depression at three or four of the four survey waves). Employment status, relationship status, and fathers' depression were among the sociodemographic characteristics most robustly associated with both stability and change in maternal depression. Given the important social consequences of maternal depression, not least of which is impaired wellbeing among children of depressed mothers, prevention and treatment of maternal depression should be an imperative for researchers, clinicians, and policymakers alike

Descriptive Statistics of All Variables Included in Analyses.

<p>Note: With two exceptions, all demographic characteristics are measured at baseline. Employed in the past week is measured at the one-year survey, and depression chronicity of the child’s father captures responses from the 1-, 3-, 5-, and 9-year surveys.</p>a<p>Mothers have intermittent depression if they report depression at one or two of the four survey waves. Mothers have persistent depression if they report depression at three or four of the four survey waves.</p