Effects of School, Life, and Family Contexts
Global Strategies for Supporting Children and Caregivers Together
There are major gaps in services and support for children and their caregivers around the globe; these gaps widened considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Child Development Perspectives, IPR research professor Terese Sommer and her colleagues review social programs that take a “two-generation approach,” designed to improve the development of young children and the livelihoods of those children’s caregivers at the same time. To understand what helps such programs succeed, the researchers systematically synthesized findings from detailed studies of two-generation program models in Brazil, Vietnam, the United States, Colombia, and Madagascar. Broadly, the five program models fell into three categories: high-quality child care for low-income families, early childhood development services paired with parental nonformal education, and cash transfers paired with parenting guidance. All five models succeeded in engaging two generations simultaneously and improving children’s development; several did so at scale. The programs were most effective when they added services beyond child development and caregivers’ livelihoods, such as nutrition and health supports; attended to the quality and intensity of services for both generations; and tailored services to the interests and needs of the target population. The researchers stress that to make a difference, two-generation programs must be bolstered by relevant policies that improve the lives of families at both the household and societal level.
A Family-Centered Approach to Helping Student Parents Succeed in Higher Education
Approximately four million people juggle parenthood and college in the United States. How can a family-centered education program in Tulsa support these student parents? IPR faculty researchers Lauren Tighe, Teresa Eckrich Sommer, Terri Sabol, and Lindsay Chase-Lansdale investigate the effects of the program in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. The Community Action Project of Tulsa’s CareerAdvance program provides education and career training in healthcare to low-income parents with children. Its original model was centered in Head Start and helped parents achieve postsecondary education while their young children received early education programming. The program also provided numerous supportive services such as free tuition and childcare. The second model, which was based in an adult education and workforce agency and designed to serve the broader Tulsa population, began offering parents similar family-centered support and assistance The IPR team conducted a randomized control trial to evaluate the impacts of the adult model. They surveyed 277 racially and ethnically diverse parents, mostly mothers, 191 of whom received access to the program and 86 who did not. After a year in the program, parent participants were more likely to have obtained a vocational certificate or an associate degree compared to those who did not participate. The study is one of the first to show experimentally that a two-generation program might be effective in promoting student parents’ educational success.
In-School Counseling Program Improves Teen Girls’ PTSD Symptoms
Young women, especially Black and Latina girls, suffer disproportionately from trauma-related depression, PTSD, and anxiety, yet little is known about effective treatment options. In Science Advances, IPR economist Jonathan Guryan and his colleagues examine the effectiveness and affordability of a school-based counseling program, Working on Womanhood (WOW), a trauma-informed, relationship-centered counseling and mentoring program designed by and for Black and Latina women. WOW focuses on addressing anxiety, depression, and PTSD in young women of color and was developed and delivered by Youth Guidance, a social services provider based in Chicago. The study is the first large-scale randomized controlled trial of such an initiative for young women in Chicago. Across the 2017–18 and 2018–19 school years, 3,749 high school girls in 10 public schools in Chicago participated in the study. The research finds that attending the weekly in-school counseling program for four months decreased participants’ PTSD symptoms by 22%, depression by 14%, and anxiety by nearly 10%. The results suggest that group-based, in-school therapy programs such as WOW can improve mental health symptoms. The results also highlight the lack of alternative mental health services available to young women. The authors conclude that WOW appears very cost-effective when judged based on its ability to alleviate mental health symptoms. Guryan is Lawyer Taylor Professor of Education and Social Policy.
The COVID-19 ‘Baby Bump’
Birth rates typically drop following recessions, so how did the economic downturn of the COVID-19 pandemic influence births? In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, IPR economist Hannes Schwandt and his colleagues examine the effects of the pandemic on U.S. childbearing. The researchers analyzed national birth data from 2015 through 2021, and California birth data from 2015 through February 2023. The researchers show that U.S. fertility rates fell by much less than predicted by standard economic models in 2020, masking two separate patterns. The number of births to foreign-born women fell sharply in early 2020, although the decline was too early to reflect fertility response to the pandemic. In contrast, U.S.-born women saw little decline in percentage terms and experienced a “baby bump” in 2021, resulting in a net increase of 39,760 births over the years 2020 and 2021. Data from California suggest that the increase in fertility among U.S.-born women continued through February 2023. Not only was this the first recession in recent history not followed by a baby bust, but it reversed declining fertility rates for the first time since the Great Recession of 2007– 2009. For foreign-born women, births decreased by more than 45,000 in early 2020 and continued to remain 4.7% lower into 2021. This is likely due to the Trump administration's restrictions on international travel from China in January 2020, followed by restrictions on those traveling from Mexico and other countries. Some likely reasons for the bump among U.S.-born women include pandemic government aid which kept many Americans financially stable. The increase was also driven largely by women without children (first births) and women with a college education, who may have been more likely to benefit from working from home.
Encouraging Cognitive Skills with Video Games
Is playing action video games associated with the development of cognitive abilities? In their meta-analysis of studies in Technology, Mind, and Behavior, IPR statistician Elizabeth Tipton and her colleagues investigate this correlation. The researchers examine action video games, defined as first- or third-person shooter games, and cognition using two types of studies in this analysis: cross-sectional and intervention. Cross-sectional studies compared the cognition of those who play action video games regularly to those who do not play them. The intervention studies compared experimental groups playing action video games to a control group that played video games that are not action or brain games. The selection of studies began very broadly, using basic search terms, but was then narrowed through stringent criteria, leaving 74 cross-sectional studies, 22 intervention, and 14 that fell into both categories. In cross-sectional studies, there were significant effects noticed in perceptual, goal-oriented attentional, spatial, and multitasking skills when compared to nonvideo game players. For intervention studies, there was a medium causal effect in goal-oriented attentional and multitasking skills. The researchers conclude that playing action video games is linked to the growth of some cognitive skills, and they suggest that computer games be developed to foster cognitive development.
Ideal Family Size During the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted every aspect of life, but how did it affect Americans’ ideal family size? In the Journal of Marriage and Family, IPR sociologist Julia Behrman examines whether the pandemic changed people’s conceptions of an ideal family. She analyzed a dataset of interviews from 1,823 adults over the age of 18 from the General Social Survey (GSS), collected by NORC at the University of Chicago. The participants were interviewed before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2016 and 2018 on their attitudes, behaviors, and demographic characteristics, including information about their ideal family size. They were re-interviewed in the first six months of the pandemic between August 24 and September 26, 2020. The results show that the pandemic had no impact on the ideal family size of the participants. Prior to the pandemic, the ideal family size was 2.5 among the participants, a number that has remained stable in the United States since the 1970s. The findings suggest that despite the shock of the pandemic, Americans’ ideal family size did not change. Future research should investigate how desired family size might have been impacted by the pandemic and how the ideal family size might have evolved among different subgroups, such as younger Americans and those with less education.
The Metaphors of Feelings and Adolescent Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy uses metaphors to describe emotions, and some metaphors are so powerful they may shape how people understand themselves. In Transcultural Psychiatry, IPR anthropologist Rebecca Seligman examines how one metaphor commonly used in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) affects Mexican American adolescents receiving mental healthcare. Over more than 18 months, she observed an urban outpatient psychiatry clinic, including staff conferences, trainings, and clinical materials. She also interviewed 37 adolescents being treated, the mothers of 21 of the teens, and 17 clinicians. Most of the teens were diagnosed with mood, anxiety, or attention deficit disorders. Seligman focused on a key metaphor used in CBT with children and adolescents: “The Feelings Thermometer.” Just as we measure changes in body temperature, patients are asked to track and measure their emotions and feelings. The metaphorical thermometer encouraged the adolescents to see their emotions as internal and fluctuating, but also as measurable and ultimately controllable. The medical authority behind the use of the thermometer strengthened its power in shaping how teens conceptualized their emotions. It had the effect of distancing them from their own feelings and creating a sense of control over their emotions. At the same time, it also imposed a particular, mechanistic understanding of emotions that sometimes conflicted with teens’ own experience and enforced a cultural value on self-control. The research suggests that the use of metaphor in psychotherapy is deeply rooted in cultural and political understandings of emotion and that therapists should be attuned both to the implications of their metaphors and the metaphors that their patients bring into the clinic with them.
Using School-Based Mentors to Reduce Suicide Risk Among Adolescents
Bullying is one risk factor for suicide among adolescents, but as bullying shifts to online platforms, such as texting and social media, cyberbullying is also a common risk factor for suicidality—suicidal ideation, planning, and attempts. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among adolescents, making it critical to identify what may reduce suicidality risks. In Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, IPR health researcher Lauren Beach, epidemiologist Gregory Phillips II, and their colleagues evaluate whether mentoring relationships mitigate a student’s chances of suicidality. The researchers used the 2017 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) and focused on five jurisdictions that asked students if they had at least one teacher or adult in their school they could talk to about problems. Students self-reported their experience with cyberbullying and suicidal ideation, planning, and attempts in the past 12 months. Of the 25,592 students in the sample, 87% reported having an adult they could talk with, and the researchers found mentoring relationships were associated with lower chances of suicidal ideation, planning, and attempts for both females and males. Having a mentor substantially decreased the odds of attempting suicide among males who were cyberbullied. Females who have a mentor have lower chances of suicidal ideation and attempts. These results suggest schools that help their students develop informal and formal mentoring relationships may prevent suicidality among students.
Are Wealth and Parenthood Connected?
Over the last several decades, raising a child has become increasingly more expensive, yet previous research shows inconsistent evidence about how parenthood affects wealth. In Sociological Science, IPR social demographer Christine Percheski and Christina Gibson-Davis of Duke University examine how wealth and parenthood are connected. They analyze data from the 1989 through 2019 waves of the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), a cross-sectional survey of U.S. families conducted by the Federal Reserve, for 41,625 households where the head of the household is younger than 65 years old. The survey included information on net worth, parental status, demographics, household income, and wealth-building behaviors for each household. On average, parents have almost three times as much median wealth as those without children. This difference partly reflects differences in demographic characteristics, such as age and education. But more importantly, there are huge differences in wealth among parents. Even accounting for differences in age, education, and other characteristics, married parents have had the highest levels of wealth consistently across the last 30 years. Mothers who have never been married, divorced mothers, single fathers, and co-habiting parents had lower average levels of wealth than married parents. What explains this? One factor is home ownership. Married-parent couples were substantially more likely to own homes than adults in any other household types. This pattern raises important questions about economic inequality resulting from policies that subsidize and promote homeownership.