Costs of Raising Grandchildren on Grandmother-Adult Child Relations in Black and White Families

The cost of raising grandchildren on grandmothers’ mental and physical health has been well-documented; however, little is known about whether raising grandchildren also has a cost on grandmothers’ relationships with the adult children whose children the grandmothers have raised. Drawing from theories of exchange and affect, stress process model, and racial differences in intergenerational solidarity, we tested how raising grandchildren affects grandmother-adult child relations. Further, we explored the extent to which these patterns differed by race. To address this question, we used mixed-methods data collected from 553 older mothers regarding their relationships with their 2,016 adult children; approximately 10% of the mothers had raised one or more of their grandchildren “as their own.” Data were provided by the Within-Family Differences Study-I. Multilevel analyses showed that raising grandchildren was associated with greater closeness in grandmother-adult child relationship in Black families; however, in White families, raising grandchildren was associated with greater conflict in the grandmother-adult child relationship. Further, the differences by race in the effects of raising grandchildren on closeness and conflict were statistically significant. Qualitative analyses revealed that race differences in the association between raising grandchildren and relationship quality could be explained by mothers’ reports of greater family solidarity in Black than White families. Our findings highlight the ways in which race and family solidarity interact to produce differences in the impact of raising grandchildren on Black and White mothers’ assessment of the quality of their relationships with their adult children, consistent with broader patterns of racial differences in intergenerational cohesion.

Does Overwork Attenuate the Motherhood Earnings Penalty among Full-Time Workers?

This study examines whether working long hours alters the motherhood earnings penalty in the context of the United States. The author uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979–2014) to model the annual earnings penalty mothers incur per child in the United States. The results support that working long hours (50+ hours per week) reduces the negative effect of motherhood on earnings for white women. Once we control for human capital and labour supply, however, there is no difference in the effect of children on earnings between full-time workers and overworkers. For black full-time workers and overworkers, having an additional child has little effect on earnings. The findings suggest that although overwork appears to attenuate the earnings penalty for white mothers, white mothers who work long hours exhibit a smaller penalty because they already have high levels of human capital and supply a great amount of labour.

State Policies, Racial Disparities, and Income Support: A Way to Address Infant Outcomes and the Persistent Black-White Gap?

Low-birthweight and preterm births vary by state, and black mothers typically face twice the risk that their white counterparts do. This gap reflects an accumulation of psychosocial and material exposures which include interpersonal racism, as well as differential experience with area-level deprivation like residential segregation, and other harmful exposures that we refer to as “institutional” or “structural” racism. We use logistic regression models and a data set that includes all births from 1994-2017, as well as five state policies from this period—Aid to Families with Dependent Children/Temporary Aid for Needy Families, Housing Assistance, Medicaid, Minimum Wage and Earned Income Tax Credit—to examine whether these state social policies, designed to provide a financial “safety net,” are associated with risk reduction of low birthweight and preterm birth to black and white mothers, and whether variations in state generosity attenuate the racial inequalities in birth outcomes. We also examine whether the relationship between state policies and racial inequalities in birth outcomes is moderated by the education level of the mother. We find that the EITC reduces the risk of low birthweight and preterm birth for black mothers. The impact is much less consistent for white mothers. For both black and white mothers, the benefits to birth outcomes are larger for mothers with less education.

“A Personal Decision”: A Mixed-Methods Study of Parents’ Opposition to School-Based Public Health Initiatives in the Wake of COVID-19

Schools play a key role in promoting public health. Yet, these initiatives also face opposition from parents, and such opposition may be increasing in the wake of misinformation campaigns and efforts to politicize public health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, parent opposition helped derail schools’ efforts to require masks and vaccines. Thus, it is important for educators and policymakers to understand the extent, source, and nature of parents’ opposition to new school-based public health initiatives. Combining data from a national survey of US parents (N=1,945) with a content analysis of a Facebook group for parents in one politically divided school community, we found that, at the peak of the pandemic (December 2020), nearly one third of parents opposed each of our two focal initiatives. We also found that parents based their opposition to (or support for) school-based public health initiatives on individualistic calculations about the costs and benefits those initiatives would impose on their individual child. Those calculations, however, did not always follow the same logic. In light of those varied logics, vaccine opposition was most common among Republicans, mothers (especially white mothers), parents without college degrees, and Black parents. Meanwhile, opposition to mask mandates was disproportionately common among Republicans, fathers, and college-educated parents (especially among white parents), as well as among those who had COVID-19. We conclude that individualistic approaches to parental decision-making are preventing communities from enacting and maintaining school-based public health initiatives and undermining health and education as public goods.

Bias in comparisons of mortality among very preterm births: A cohort study

Background Several studies of prenatal determinants and neonatal morbidity and mortality among very preterm births have resulted in unexpected and paradoxical findings. We aimed to compare perinatal death rates among cohorts of very preterm births (24–31 weeks) with rates among all births in these groups (≥24 weeks), using births-based and fetuses-at-risk formulations. Methods We conducted a cohort study of singleton live births and stillbirths ≥24 weeks’ gestation using population-based data from the United States and Canada (2006–2015). We contrasted rates of perinatal death between women with or without hypertensive disorders, between maternal races, and between births in Canada vs the United States. Results Births-based perinatal death rates at 24–31 weeks were lower among hypertensive than among non-hypertensive women (rate ratio [RR] 0.67, 95% CI 0.65–0.68), among Black mothers compared with White mothers (RR 0.94, 95%CI 0.92–0.95) and among births in the United States compared with Canada (RR 0.74, 95%CI 0.71–0.75). However, overall (≥24 weeks) perinatal death rates were higher among births to hypertensive vs non-hypertensive women (RR 2.14, 95%CI 2.10–2.17), Black vs White mothers (RR 1.86, 95%CI 184–1.88;) and births in the United States vs Canada (RR 1.08, 95%CI 1.05–1.10), as were perinatal death rates based on fetuses-at-risk at 24–31 weeks (RR for hypertensive disorders: 2.58, 95%CI 2.53–2.63; RR for Black vs White ethnicity: 2.29, 95%CI 2.25–2.32; RR for United States vs Canada: 1.27, 95%CI 1.22–1.30). Conclusion Studies of prenatal risk factors and between-centre or between-country comparisons of perinatal mortality bias causal inferences when restricted to truncated cohorts of very preterm births.

Revising The Scarlet Letter: Race and Motherhood in In the Blood and Little Fires Everywhere

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter has generated numerous adaptations. Its depiction of race has made it a problematic ‘master text’, however, especially since it was published in the same year as the US Fugitive Slave Act. This essay examines three recent adaptations across a variety of media that focus on the relationship between race and motherhood, revealing the ways in which Hester Prynne can be integrated into society as a single mother in ways that non-white mothers cannot. Suzan-Lori Parks’ 1998 play In the Blood stages ‘Hester, La Negrita’ as a homeless mother of five who cannot escape the ‘hand of fate’ of racial oppression. Celeste Ng’s 2017 novel Little Fires Everywhere reinvents Hester as a surrogate mother whose efforts on behalf of a birth mother in a trans-racial adoption dispute highlight how race differentially impacts maternal rights. The 2020 Hulu television adaptation of Ng’s novel casts the Hester and Pearl figures, along with an artist named Hawthorne, as black women whose activism forces the Richardson family to acknowledge their white privilege. Together, these adaptations examine how the ‘monstrous birth’ of slavery that Hawthorne only belatedly acknowledged has had a lingering afterlife in constructions of race and motherhood.

Racial-Nativity Differences in Maternal Parental Stress: Exploring the Impacts of Socioeconomic Status

Objective: This study examines racial and nativity differences in mothers’ parental stress levels, and how mothers’ socioeconomic status (SES), including education, employment, and household income predict their levels of parental stress.Background: SES is an important predictor of mothers’ parental stress. Racial minority and immigrant mothers generally face higher parental stress than native-born White mothers. However, less is known about if the differences in stress are caused by racial and nativity disparities in SES or by the diverse impacts of SES on the stress of mothers from different racial and nativity groups.Method: Using the second wave of Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: 2010-11 Kindergarten Class (N=8,336, https://nces.ed.gov/ecls/), I estimated racial and nativity differences in parental stress levels using OLS regression. Regression coefficients were compared across racial and nativity groups using Stata’s suest and test commands to explore racial and nativity differences in how SES predicts parental stress.Result: Foreign-born Black, Hispanic, Asian, and native-born Asian mothers experienced higher parental stress than native-born White mothers. Low SES was associated with higher parental stress among Black and Hispanic mothers, especially among foreign-born Black mothers. Among White and Asian mothers, socioeconomic disadvantage did not necessarily predict higher parental stress. Conclusion: Disparities in SES are not enough to explain racial minority and immigrant mothers’ higher parental stress relative to native-born White mothers. The impact of SES on parental stress also varies across racial and nativity groups, possibly due to the systemic racism against Black and Hispanic population, and the racial and nativity differences in motherhood ideology.