This paper examines two aspects of teen childbearing in the United States. First, it reviews and synthesizes the evidence on the reasons why teen birth rates are so uniquely high in the United States and especially in some states. Second, it considers why and how it matters. We argue that economists' typical explanations are unable to account for…

For parents of young children the decision to work strongly depends on the availability of affordable child care. Child care costs can take up a large portion of a family budget and may serve as an obstacle to work. In 2008 the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) estimated that Kentucky families recently…

Research completed since the 1980s has yielded substantial knowledge about how to help welfare recipients and other low-income individuals prepare for and find jobs. Many participants in these successful job preparation and placement programs, however, ended up in unstable, low-paying jobs, and little was known about how to effectively help them…

This report summarizes the final impact results for the national Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project. This project tested, using a random assignment design, the effectiveness of numerous programs intended to promote steady work and career advancement. All the programs targeted current and former welfare recipients and other low-wage…

This paper reports on the experiences of the Evaluation Team, comprised of experienced librarians from the Christchurch City Libraries and primary teacher educators (from Canterbury University) as they planned and implemented interventions working with the children of teen mothers (one marginalised cohort within a wider study). In particular it…

Researchers in many fields agree. The physical, social, and economic health and well-being of adults and society as a whole are strongly influenced by the early experiences of children, when the foundation for effective cognitive and social skills and abilities are developed. Children who have developmental delays or disabilities require and often…

Following the ongoing increase in nonmarital fertility, policy makers have looked for ways to limit the disadvantages faced by children of unmarried mothers. Recent initiatives included marriage promotion and welfare-to-work programs. Yet policy might also consider the promotion of three generational households. We know little about whether…

Most children in the U.S. today will experience one or more changes in family structure. The present study explores the implications of this trend for child development by investigating the conditions under which family structure changes matter most to child well-being. Using data from the Maternal and Child Supplement of the National Longitudinal…

In Ireland, historically and in the current era, family has been a central concern for society and the State. This article provides a descriptive overview of family life in Ireland and of major family-related changes over the past 40 years. It presents a general framework of analysis within which these changes can be understood, considers the…

This study analyzed trends in marital behavior for unwed mothers who gave birth between 1960 and 2004. With nationally representative data on 15,353 White and Black unmarried mothers, results indicated that mothers who gave birth after 1989 were waiting much longer to marry than were mothers giving birth before 1968. The most pronounced delays…

As more unmarried couples become parents, it is important to understand the dynamics that help these couples to maintain strong relationships. This article explores the association of the two partners' beliefs about father involvement with their likelihood of union dissolution and transition to marriage, using the first two waves of the Fragile…

High rates of nonmarital fertility and divorce mean that many fathers do not live with some or all of their children. Using the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, this research compares socioeconomic and family characteristics among men with only coresidential children (n = 762), with both coresidential and nonresidential children (n = 107),…

Contested social norms underlie public concern about adults' and teenagers' nonmarital pregnancy. The original, vignette-based National Pregnancy Norms Survey (N = 812) measures these norms and related sanctions. Descriptive analyses report embarrassment at the prospect of a nonmarital pregnancy by age and gender of hypothetical prospective…

The promotion of marriage and two-parent families became an explicit public policy goal with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Marriage has the putative effect of reducing welfare dependency among single mothers, but only if they marry men with earnings sufficient to lift them and their children out of poverty. Newly released data from…

Since welfare reform in 1996, marriage has been promoted as a means to reduce welfare dependency and out-of-wedlock childbearing. Despite extensive public and academic discourse surrounding marriage promotion, a basic factor preceding and predicting marriage--expectations to marry--has received little attention. Using insights from the life course…