This panel examines research on early education from two research practice partnerships, the Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) with Baltimore City Schools and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Stanford-SFUSD Partnership with San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and Stanford University in San Francisco,…

Extensive research has established that fathers' engagement in parenting benefits children, but few studies have described how fathers contribute to child development even before birth. In this article, we consider both direct and indirect pathways through which expectant fathers shape child development during the prenatal period. Regarding direct…

The transaction of children's core language skill and their home learning environment was assessed across 5 waves from infancy (15 months) up to adolescence (11 years) in 1,751 low-socioeconomic status families. Child core language skill and the quality of the home learning environment were each stable across waves, and the two covaried at each…

Mounting evidence finds that early life environmental factors increased the probability of autism spectrum disorder. We estimated prospective associations between early life environmental factors and autism spectrum disorder symptoms in children at the age of 2 years in a population-derived birth cohort, the Barwon Infant Study. Autism spectrum…

Kindergarten redshirting is the term used to describe the phenomenon where a parent chooses to keep their child from attending kindergarten so that the child may gain a year's worth of maturity. This qualitative dissertation examines the decision making process undergone by parents who have redshirted their children. While some parents began the…

Caregivers frequently find the premature birth of a child as a crisis. This pilot study explored the perceived types of stress experienced by parents of premature infants and the impact on caregiving. Caregivers completed the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R; n = 4) and participated in a focus group (n = 3) or interview (n = 1). Caregivers'…

This paper examines people's attitudes toward public spending on education in Japan. It is well known that Japan has the smallest public education expenditure relative to GDP among the OECD countries, and this may yield unequal opportunities in education. The tax burden in Japan is small compared to those in OECD countries, and there may be no…

This study examines whether maternal warmth moderates the association between maternal use of spanking and increased child aggression between ages 1 and 5. Participants were 3,279 pairs of mothers and their children from a cohort study of urban families from 20 U.S. cities. Maternal spanking was assessed when the child was 1 year, 3 years, and 5…

Background/Context: In light of increasingly common, non-traditional pathways to college enrollment and potential importance of post-secondary education for family wellbeing, this article examines maternal college enrollment. I employ a sociological application of rational action theory in which costs of reentry, probability of success, and…

Low cost, non-invasive instruments for the identification of high academic potential in early childhood education and care are scarce, and the complexity of cognitive development indicates that combinations of screening instruments are needed. This study investigates the reliability and validity of three instruments (individually and in…

Sub-Saharan Africa exhibits higher fertility and lower education than other world regions. Economic and demographic theory posit that these phenomena are linked, with slow fertility decline connected to slow education growth among both adults and children. Using microdata from 33 African countries, this paper documents the co-evolution of adult…

This article presents comparisons of the ages and facts of starting demographic events in Russia based on the findings of three large-scale surveys: the European Social Survey, 2006; the Generations and Gender Survey, 2004, 2007, and 2011; and Person, Family, Society, 2013. This study focuses on the intergenerational and gender differences in the…

Background: Classroom engagement is key predictor of child academic success. Aim: The objective of the study was to examine how preschool cognitive control and the experience of family adversity predict developmental trajectories of classroom engagement through elementary school. Setting: Children were followed in the context of the Quebec…

Marriage is on the decline. Men and women of the youngest generation are either marrying in their late twenties or not marrying at all. Childbearing has also been postponed, but not as much as marriage. The result is that a growing proportion of children are born to unmarried parents--roughly 40 percent in recent years, and over 50 percent for…

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, a nationally representative cohort of young adults, the authors analyzed relationship type at the time of a first birth (N = 4,044). More than 10% of births were to a postconception cohabiting household (cohabitations that were initiated between conception and birth), a higher…