Stepfamily Structure and Transfers Between Generations in U.S. Families.

Unstable couple relationships and high rates of repartnering have increased the share of U.S. families with stepkin. Yet data on stepfamily structure are from earlier periods, include only coresident stepkin, or cover only older adults. In this study, we use new data on family structure and transfers in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to describe the prevalence and numbers of stepparents and stepchildren for adults of all ages and to characterize the relationship between having stepkin and transfers of time and money between generations, regardless of whether the kin live together. We find that having stepparents and stepchildren is very common among U.S. households, especially younger households. Furthermore, stepkin substantially increase the typical household's family size; stepparents and stepchildren increase a household's number of parents and adult children by nearly 40 % for married/cohabiting couples with living parents and children. However, having stepkin is associated with fewer transfers, particularly time transfers between married women and their stepparents and stepchildren. The increase in the number of family members due to stepkin is insufficient to compensate for the lower likelihood of transfers in stepfamilies. Our findings suggest that recent cohorts with more stepkin may give less time assistance to adult children and receive less time assistance from children in old age than prior generations.

The Effects of Vignette Placement on Attitudes Toward Supporting Family Members.

Vignettes are useful for measuring norms and beliefs, but little is known about how vignette placement affects responses to subsequent attitude questions. We investigate how the placement of a vignette about parents and adult children living together affects answers to subsequent questions about family obligations in a survey of the U.S. POPULATION: We randomly assigned the order of the vignette and three single-statement attitude questions. For the single-statement question about family members living together, the effect of vignette placement depended on respondents' original attitudes. For individuals with ambivalent or positive attitudes, asking the vignette before the attitude questions doubled reports of favorable attitudes. Vignette placement had no effect for those with negative attitudes. For the single-statement attitude questions about financial support between parents and adult children, vignette placement had no effect, suggesting that vignette placement may only influence subsequent questions about the same topic.

Competing Demands from Aging Parents and Adult Children in Two Cohorts of American Women.

In late middle age, individuals may face competing demands on their time and financial resources from elderly parents and young adult children. This study uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine changes over time in the probability of having children and living parents for women age 45 to 64. We compare two cohorts: those born in the 1920s and 1930s and those born in the 1940s and 1950s. We find that there has been a dramatic increase in the probability of having children and living parents and that this increase has been driven mainly by changes in life expectancy of the parent generation. We further examine transfers of money and co-residence for women in the later cohort. We find that while women may not give to parents and children concurrently, approximately thirty percent of them have provided support to both parents and children at some point in the past.

Intergenerational transfers and rosters of the extended family: a new substudy of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics.

Family members provide support to each other at critical life stages. To better understand the pervasiveness, causes, and consequences of such support, a sub-study of the United States (U.S.) Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) was created. A battery of questions on family relationships and intergenerational transfers was designed, pretested on a U.S. national telephone sample, and then administered in the 2013 wave of the PSID. These new data are available to the public. Given the extensive supporting data available on the respondents and members of their co-resident and non-co-resident family members - many of whom are interviewed themselves - the new sub-study will become a valuable resource to researchers.

Childhood Poverty and the Transition to Adulthood.

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.

The Motherhood Penalty at Midlife: Long-Term Effects of Children on Women's Careers.

The authors build on prior research on the motherhood wage penalty to examine whether the career penalties faced by mothers change over the life course. They broaden the focus beyond wages to also consider labor force participation and occupational status and use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women to model the changing impact of motherhood as women age from their 20s to their 50s (n = 4,730). They found that motherhood is "costly" to women's careers, but the effects on all 3 labor force outcomes attenuate at older ages. Children reduce women's labor force participation, but this effect is strongest when women are younger, and is eliminated by the 40s and 50s. Mothers also seem able to regain ground in terms of occupational status. The wage penalty for having children varies by parity, persisting across the life course only for women who have 3 or more children.

A Demographic Perspective on Family Change.

Demographic analysis seeks to understand how individual microlevel decisions about child-bearing, marriage and partnering, geographic mobility, and behaviors that influence health and longevity aggregate to macrolevel population trends and differentials in fertility, mortality and migration. In this review, I first discuss theoretical perspectives-classic demographic transition theory, the perspective of the "second demographic transition," the spread of developmental idealism-that inform demographers' understanding of macrolevel population change. Then, I turn to a discussion of the role that demographically informed data collection has played in illuminating family change since the mid-20th century in the United States. Finally, I discuss ways in which demographic theory and data collection might inform future areas of family research, particularly in the area of intergenerational family relationships and new and emerging family forms.

Coresidence and Geographic Proximity of Mothers and Adult Children in Stepfamilies.

Children who live with or near a parent provide more care and receive more help from parents than geographically distant children. Stepfamily ties may be weaker than ties between biological kin, but little is known about the geographic proximity of step- versus biological kin. The authors used data from the Health and Retirement Study (N = 13,239 mothers and 45,675 biological and stepchildren) to show that stepchildren and stepmothers are less likely to live together, less likely to live nearby, and less likely to move closer than biological children and mothers. When mothers have only stepchildren, they are less likely to have a coresident child or a child nearby than mothers with both step- and biological children. Coresidence and geographic proximity are lower in stepfamilies formed after divorce than after widowhood. The findings are consistent with a legacy of conflict and strain and the likely competing needs of biological and stepmothers.

Demographic Change and Parent-Child Relationships in Adulthood.

Demographic changes in who becomes a parent, how many children parents have, and the marital statuses of parents and children affect the extent to which parents and adult children provide for each other later in life. We describe these demographic changes and their implications for the help parents and children give each other throughout their adult years. The changing demography of US families has increased both generations' need for family assistance among those already disadvantaged and has exacerbated differences between the socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged in the availability of kin support. Variations in the marital histories of parents and children also contribute to a divergence between mother-child and father-child relationships in later life. The churning of couple relationships in both generations blurs the boundaries between who is in the family and who is not, threatening the effectiveness of the family safety net among those who may need it the most.

Explaining Racial/Ethnic Variation in Partnered Women's and Men's Housework: Does One Size Fit All?

Using a national sample of 12,424 partnered women and 10,721 partnered men from the 2003-2006 American Time Use Survey, this article examines racial/ethnic variation in women's and men's housework time and its covariates. The ratio of women's to men's housework hours is greatest for Hispanics and Asians and smallest for Whites and Blacks. White and Hispanic women's housework hours are associated with household composition and employment suggesting that the time availability perspective is a good predictor for these women, but may have less explanatory power for other race/ ethnic groups of women. Relative resources also have explanatory power for White women's housework time but are weak predictors for women of Other race/ethnicities. Time availability and relative resource measures show some association with White men's housework time but are generally poor predictors among other race/ethnic groups of men, suggesting that traditional models of housework allocation do not "fit" all groups equally.

Doubling up when times are tough: A study of obligations to share a home in response to economic hardship.

This study uses a factorial vignette design embedded in an Internet survey to investigate attitudes toward an adult child and parent living together in response to economic hardship. Over half of Americans said the desirability of intergenerational co-residence depends on particularistic aspects of the family, notably the quality of family relationships. Support for co-residence is greatest when the adult child is single rather than partnered. Support is weaker if the adult child is cohabiting rather than married to the partner, although groups with greater exposure to cohabitation make less of a distinction between cohabitation and marriage. Presence of a grandchild does not affect views about co-residence. There is more support for sharing a home when a mother needs a place to live than when the adult child does. Responses to open-ended questions show that individuals invoke both universalistic family obligations and particularistic qualities of family relationships to explain their attitudes.

Time use of youths by immigrant and native-born parents: ATUS results.

A study based on the American Time Use Survey finds that, although native-born and immigrant youths pass their days in similar ways, Latino and Asian immigrant youths spend more time studying and less time in paid employment than do native-born youths; more time devoted to study may be a mechanism by which immigrants achieve educational mobility.

When Do Fathers Care? Mothers' Economic Contribution and Fathers' Involvement in Child Care.

Previous literature suggests a tenuous link between fathers' care of children and maternal employment and earnings. This study shows that the link is stronger when measures of caregiving capture fathers' increased responsibility for children. The analysis of time diary data from 6,572 married fathers and 7,376 married mothers with children under age 13 indicates that fathers (1) engage in more "solo" care of children when their wives are employed, (2) are more likely to do the kind of child care associated with responsibility for their children when their wives spend more time in the labor market, and (3) participate more in routine care when their wives contribute a greater share of the couple's earnings. In addition, the "father care" to "mother care" ratio rises when mothers contribute a greater share of household earnings.

Changing families, changing workplaces.

American families and workplaces have both changed dramatically over the past half-century. Paid work by women has increased sharply, as has family instability. Education-related inequality in work hours and income has grown. These changes, says Suzanne Bianchi, pose differing work-life issues for parents at different points along the income distribution. Between 1975 and 2009, the labor force rate of mothers with children under age eighteen increased from 47.4 percent to 71.6 percent. Mothers today also return to work much sooner after the birth of a child than did mothers half a century ago. High divorce rates and a sharp rise in the share of births to unmarried mothers mean that more children are being raised by a single parent, usually their mother. Workplaces too have changed, observes Bianchi. Today's employees increasingly work nonstandard hours. The well-being of highly skilled workers and less-skilled workers has been diverging. For the former, work hours may be long, but income has soared. For lower-skill workers, the lack of "good jobs" disconnects fathers from family obligations. Men who cannot find work or have low earnings potential are much less likely to marry. For low-income women, many of whom are single parents, the work-family dilemma is how to care adequately for children and work enough hours to support them financially. Jobs for working-class and lower middle-class workers are relatively stable, except in economic downturns, but pay is low, and both parents must work full time to make ends meet. Family income is too high to qualify for government subsidized child care, but too low to afford high-quality care in the private market. These families struggle to have a reasonable family life and provide for their family's economic well-being. Bianchi concludes that the "work and family" problem has no one solution because it is not one problem. Some workers need more work and more money. Some need to take time off around the birth of a child without permanently derailing a fulfilling career. Others need short-term support to attend to a family health crisis. How best to meet this multiplicity of needs is the challenge of the coming decade.

Help to Family and Friends: Are There Gender Differences at Older Ages?

This paper uses recent data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (N = 5,220) to explore gender differences in the extent to which adults in their 50s and 60s provide informal help to their adult children, elderly parents and friends We find that both men and women report very high levels of helping kin and nonkin alike, though women do more to assist elderly parents and women provide much more emotional support to others than do men. Men provide more assistance than do women with "housework, yard work and repairs." As they retire from the workforce, married men become significantly more involved in the care of their grandchildren, virtually eliminating any gender difference by the time they are in their 60s.

Explaining Family Change and Variation: Challenges for Family Demographers.

Twenty years ago, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) issued a request for proposals that resulted in the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), a unique survey valuable to a wide range of family scholars. This paper describes the efforts of an interdisciplinary group of family demographers to build on the progress enabled by the NSFH and many other theoretical and methodological innovations. Our work, also supported by NICHD, will develop plans for research and data collection to address the central question of what causes family change and variation. We outline the group's initial assessments of orienting frameworks, key aspects of family life to study, and theoretical and methodological challenges for research on family change. Finally, we invite family scholars to follow our progress and to help develop this shared public good.