Unwed Mothers‘ Private Safety Nets and Children‘s Socioemotional Wellbeing

Abstract

Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 1,162) and the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (N = 1,308), we estimate associations between material and instrumental support available to unwed, low-income mothers and young children‘s socioemotional wellbeing. In multivariate OLS models, we find mothers‘ available support is negatively associated with children‘s behavior problems and positively associated with prosocial behavior in both datasets; associations between available support and children‘s internalizing and prosocial behaviors attenuate but remain robust in residualized change models. Overall, results support the hypothesis that the availability of a private safety net is positively associated with children‘s socioemotional adjustment.