Time With Children, Children's Well-Being, and Work-Family Balance Among Employed Parents Cultural imperatives for ''good'' parenting include spending time with children and ensuring that they do well in life. Knowledge of how these factors influence employed parents' work-family balance is limited. Analyses using time diary and survey data from the 2000 National Survey of Parents (N = 933) indicate that how time with children relates to parents' feelings of balance varies by gender and social class. Interactive ''quality'' time is linked with mothers' feelings of balance more than fathers'. More time in routine care relates to imbalance for fathers without college degrees. Feeling that one spends the ''right'' amount of time with children and that children are doing well are strong and independent indicators of parents' work-family balance.Paid work and family life each demand substantial commitments of time and energy, and many adults find it challenging to balance these

Utilizing the 2003 and 2004 American Time Use Survey (ATUS), this study examines the relationship between family structure and maternal time with children among 4,309 married mothers and 1,821 single mothers with children less than 13 years of age. Single mothers spend less time with their children than married mothers, though the differences are not large. Marital status and living arrangement differences in time with children largely disappear or single mothers engage in more child care than married mothers after controls for socioeconomic status and other characteristics are introduced. Thus, less maternal time with children appears to be mainly attributable to the disadvantaged social structural location of single mothers rather than different proclivities toward mothering between married and single mothers.

The authors used the Panel Study of Income Dynamics 2007 Transition to Adulthood data in combination with the 2002 Child Development Supplement to examine social class bifurcation in young adulthood. Results indicate that poor youth possibly take on adult roles “too early” at the same time that high-income youth may be supported for a long period past their 18th birthday. Although not all evidence is consistent with this bifurcated story, childhood poverty does play a key role. Young adults from poor families establish financial independence early (e.g., contributing to family bills during adolescence, considering themselves fully responsible for their finances as young adults), whereas young adults from more affluent homes are more likely to receive financial transfers from their parents (who often help them pay for college and other expenses). These findings highlight the ways in which socioeconomic inequality in childhood can differentiate youth’s experiences of adolescence and young adulthood.

To explore an exception to the association between educational attainment and health, this study unpacked variability in the drinking of U.S. college students by applying life course concepts to analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Growth curve models showed that youth who graduated from four-year colleges before turning 25 without later reentering higher education had the highest peaks in drinking after adolescence and the shallowest declines into their 30s. Deviations from this pathway in terms of type, timing, and order of college transitions flattened out drinking trajectories from adolescence into adulthood. Expectations that more alignment between precollege and college social contexts (defined by family backgrounds, high school academic performance, and peer norms) would predict the most problematic drinking trajectories among young four-year college-goers were not supported. Instead, youth who appeared headed for the early four-year college pathway but did not make it there had problematic drinking trajectories.

Objective This study explored whether mothers’ education magnified the benefits of their fertility delays for their children. Methods Multiple-group path modeling assessed whether and why the positive association between mothers’ age at first birth and children’s test scores was greater for children of college educated women than children of other women. Results Older age at first birth was associated with higher math and reading test scores among the children of college educated women via their mothers’ higher income and cognitive support for children. These mediational paths were less pronounced among the children of high school educated women and were not observed among the children of high school dropouts. Conclusion The potential for women’s delayed fertility to have benefits for their children’s early educational experiences depended on their own educational attainment.

This study examines time with children among women who remain childless in young to middle adulthood. The authors identify biologically childless women aged 25 to 44 years in the June 2004-2008 Current Population Survey, and use their subsequent time use diaries in the 2004-2009 American Time Use Survey to measure their time with children.The authors pay particular attention to time with children who are not one's "own" (by adoption or marriage) and to differences across educational groups of childless women. It is found that childless women frequently spend time with children, and childless women with no 4-year college degree are almost twice as likely to spend time with children as childless women with a 4-year degree. The authors also show how educational differences in childless women's time with children are mediated by work patterns, residential arrangements, and especially union status. The findings suggest large class differences in how women experience the boundary between childlessness and parenthood.

The sexual health of adolescents is an important and controversial topic among policymakers, social researchers, and the public both in the US and internationally. Even though one in every five people in the world is an adolescent, with 85 percent of adolescents living in developing countries (World Health Organization 2008), and sexual activity in adolescence is common, the sexual development of adolescents is often seen as problematic and often deviant, especially for girls.