Congress recently allocated $750 million over five years to promote marriage and fatherhood initiatives among low-income groups. As a result, federally-funded marriage promotion programs are springing up around the country, including in Washington, DC. Roshin Mathew, an Emerson Hunger Fellow working with Connect for Kids this year, wondered about the connection between marriage promotion and better lives for low-income children. Here are her findings, and her thoughts.
White picket fences, brownstones, housing projects; racially diverse or isolated—what impact does a family’s neighborhood really have on the well-being and opportunities for young people? How much is correlated, and how much is causal? According to this report “rigorous research indicates that neighborhood isolation and distress can contribute to or exacerbate individual and family distress.” This report examines what’s known about poverty, economic security, access to services, and child and family well-being to better understand the neighborhood-family connection. In general, the analysis suggests that neighborhood poverty has a broader influence than racial/ethnic composition but that both affect family and child outcomes.
It’s a perennial struggle for military families, but one that is hitting home for more and more of them as soldiers rotate back to the home front from Iraq and Afghanistan: the sometimes painful adjustments that come with the return of a long-absent parent. Rebecca Freshour looks at some of the issues.
Dads and Husbands: Promoting Child Well-Being Through Father Involvement and Marriage Programs is co-sponsored by Chapin Hall Center for Children and the Urban Institute, and will take place in Washington, DC:
Teamwork. Friends. Healthy exercise. That's the upside of organized sports and activities for kids. But what about the downside? Loss of family time. Stress. Weekends in the car. Andrea Grazzini Walstrom decided to take action to reclaim at least part of each precious weekend. Walstrom talks about the birth of Balance4Success, the group she started in Minnesota.
About 29 percent of all new mothers in the United States are unmarried and 15 percent are not American citizens, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which tracks state-specific data. Compared with the national average, most states in the South, and some states in the West, had a higher percentage of unmarried mothers with a birth in the last year who were below the poverty level. Overall, nearly 8 percent of those giving birth each year are teens. Approximately 12 percent of married mothers live in poverty, compared with about half of unmarried moms.
It’s a different kind of bicultural family, and one with special challenges – from safely supervising a toddler you can’t hear cry to heading off a teacher who wants to enlist your child as interpreter in a meeting about his own school performance. Rob Capriccioso reports.
Nearly one in every three babies is born to an unmarried mother and many single women are adopting children as well. In On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America, journalist Melissa Ludtke explores these trends by looking at the latest expert research and by voicing the very personal reflections of unmarried mothers. Hear the story behind the book in this article by the author.
So far we have failed in the major measure of the health of a society—how well we take care of our youngest generation. All is not lost. This book demonstrates that the building of certain developmental assets can turn the tide in helping our children to be healthy, skillful, and competent adults.
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