Social Problems: Community, Policy, and Social Action
SAGE Journal Articles
The increase in female-headed single-parent families, and the high rates of poverty among them, caused by changing economic and social support structures, is an international phenomenon. The traditional negative focus on the deviance of this family structure has led to blaming unmarried women, rather than implementing economic and social support structures that could lift their families out of poverty. This article presents data on these families and suggests ways of reframing the dialogue to broaden the lens under which social work educators, students, and practitioners view single-mother families.
Questions to Consider:
1) According to the authors of this article fewer than ¼ of fathers pay full child support. What do you think can be done to rectify this issue?
2) Do you think the system that is in place in Sweden to aid single-parent female headed households could be duplicated in the United States? Why or why not?
A longitudinal analysis is conducted on the union quality of long-term cohabiting and legally married couples using data from both waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. An analysis of racially homogamous (Anglo-American and African American) couples indicates that the cohabitors and marrieds do not differ significantly with regard to their frequency of conflict, perceptions of equity, and relationship satisfaction, although age, educational attainment, and educational homogamy affect differentially the cohabitors' and marrieds' perceptions of equity with time, and the cohabitors' satisfaction in particular is negatively affected by the number of children biologically related to both partners.
Questions to Consider:
1) One finding in this article states the following, “Brown and Booth (1996) found that cohabitors in unions of no more than 5 years’ duration perceive less equity than do the legally married in unions of similar duration”. What reasons, in your opinion, could account for this?
2) The researchers of the article state, “as the number of biological children increases, however, the satisfaction of the marrieds decreases only slightly, whereas the satisfaction of the cohabitors drops precipitously”. Why do you think this is so? Why is there a difference in satisfactions levels between married couples and cohabitators?
The present study hypothesized that 48-month-old children of divorced mothers would score lower on emerging literacy than the children of formerly cohabiting mothers, compared with the children of mothers in stable marriage. The children of mothers who divorced or exited cohabitation but then remained single did not have significantly lower literacy than children of mothers in stable marriage. The children of divorced parents who then cohabited with another man fared significantly more poorly on literacy tests than children of continuously married parents.
Questions to Consider:
1)The second hypothesis was supported by the data in the article. Why, in your opinion, were mothers who were divorced and started a new cohabiting relationship between 24 and 48 months had children with significantly lower literacy scores compared with children whose mothers were married at 24 and 48 months? What factors could play a role in the above referenced families?
2)What other factors, besides the family dynamics, play a role in lower literacy rates among children?
Evidence suggests that social support may act as a potential protective factor for psychological maladjustment, but few studies have examined the social support networks of young children exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV). The present study examined the in-home networks for 120 preschool-age children who were recently exposed to male-to-female IPV.
Questions to Consider:
1)The authors of the article stated that the families in this study reported low monthly incomes, and more than half of the mothers were not working at the time of assessment. How do you think the findings might have differed if the families had higher income levels? Would they have differed from the findings in this article?
2)According to the results of this study, preschool children exposed to IPV appear to be buffered from the negative effects of witnessing violence when having an extended in-home support network, displaying fewer Internalizing and externalizing problems when more family members are present in the home. How can this information be used by therapists who work with victims of IPV and their family members?