Journal of Family Issues

This article captures mothers' experiences of the work-family balance and division of household labor during the initial COVID-19 lockdown. Interviews were conducted with twenty-five academics and twenty professionals in other fields. Mothers who split childcare with their partners had a more positive experience of the work-family balance during lockdown, compared with mothers who did the majority of the childcare. The present study adds a new wrinkle into the literature on flexibility and work-family balance: the perception of flexibility and its impact on the division of labor...

Marital quality has been declining among recent cohorts, but whether this pattern characterizes middle-aged and older married adults is largely unknown. The doubling of the divorce rate among persons over the age of 50 years foretells poorer quality marriages for today's midlife adults than a generation ago. Combining data on married individuals aged 50-65 years from the 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) and the 2013 Families and Relationships Study, we conduct a cohort comparison of five dimensions of midlife marital quality...

This study aims to examine the association between family communication and psychological distress with coping as a potential mediator. The study also developed and validated the Family Communication Scale (FCS) in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Participants ( n = 658; 74.9% female) were general public ranged in age between 18 and 58 years (mean age = 26.38, SD = 10.01). The results showed that family communication directly influenced psychological distress and indirectly influenced through approach coping...

Using unique data from an economically and racially diverse sample of 448 caregivers with young children (ages 4-9 years) in Ohio, we assess multiple sources of family social and economic disruptions and their associations with parenting activities during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order. Caregivers reported extensive social and economic challenges during this time, while also increasing (on average) their time spent in play/learning activities. Time spent in discipline was less likely to increase during this period...

Governments of numerous countries implemented school closures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Several investigations have shown the negative impact of social-distancing policies and school closures on children worldwide. Recently, research also demonstrated adverse effects on adults' well-being. The development of children is strongly affected by their parent's emotional state. The present study aimed to examine parental stress levels caused by a short period of homeschooling in December 2020 in Germany. A structured survey was set up and distributed randomly via social media and parent associations...

To comprehensively understand the Chinese family relationships (i.e., marital relationship, parent-child relationship, sibling relationship, and grandparent-grandchild relationship) during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study investigated the changes of family relationships and the individual differences related to knowledge of the COVID-19, personality traits (i.e., neuroticism and optimism), and emotional characteristics (i.e., emotion regulation and negative emotional reactions). From March 1 to April 5, 2020, 8821 participants were involved, including 3995 teenagers, 1146 unmarried young adults, 3571 married adults, and 109 grandparents...

This research aimed to examine the effects of daily work-family conflict and work-family enrichment on daily positive and negative affect levels of employees during the first phases of the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey. The multilevel structure of the research design makes this study original. 730 day-level data were collected from 146 respondents during five consecutive workdays. One week later, a larger survey was delivered for assessing the person-level variables. The results indicated that both forms of work-family conflict significantly decreased positive affect and increased negative affect...

Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 (N = 3,748), we examine how children's summer activities vary across White, Black, Latino, and Asian American families, net of socioeconomic and other characteristics. Overall, a majority of children play outside and use screen media daily, do learning activities three days or more per week, and take family trips. Attending summer school or camps is less common. As predicted from critical race perspectives, Black parents have children spend more time attending camps than other parents...

There is an ongoing debate over whether living apart together (LAT) relationships are simply long-term relationships or alternatives to cohabitation or marriage. This study examined cohabitation and marriage expectations among older adults who LAT in the United States to address the debate. The analyses also compared the marriage expectations of older adults who LAT and cohabitors. Using data from the 2011 Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), we examined the union expectations of 250 individuals who LAT and 234 cohabitors...

Studies of family relations have not kept pace with the acceleration of international migration. To address this gap, this study relied on a survey of 545 Chinese immigrants in Chicago who reported information of 869 older parents to examine the sources of intergenerational conflict in five domains: norms/values, relationship itself, money, health, and parenting. The results of logistic regression showed that maintaining one's traditional culture, in the form of endorsing a sense of filial obligation, was a significant protective factor against all types of conflict...

Models of dyadic coping suggest that facing a stressful situation, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, with one's partner to meet their needs is associated with positive outcomes. This study explored dyadic coping and its association with relationship satisfaction and distress in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected online from 564 participants. Participants completed measures of dyadic coping, relationship satisfaction, COVID anxiety, and OCD, and asked to describe their experience in an open-ended question...

Prior to the imposition of patriarchal colonial norms, Native American (NA) gender relations were characterized as complementary and egalitarian; however, little research has explored gender relations within NA communities today. This study used a community-based critical ethnography to explore contemporary NA gender relations with a purposive sample of 208 individuals from the "Coastal Tribe" and 228 participants from the "Inland Tribe." After participant observation, interviews, and focus groups were conducted, a collaborative approach to reconstructive analysis was used to identify themes in the data...

This study uses data from the American Community Survey to examine the relationship between race, family configurations, and inequalities in private school enrollment among adoptees. We find that private school enrollment is higher in transracial than in same-race families. This disparity is driven by the outcomes of adoptees in transracial families with zero rather than one same-race parent. Among adoptees themselves, there are diverging patterns of racial stratification in same-race and transracial families...

Although several studies have documented a distinct marriage advantage in well-being, it is still unclear what it is about marriage that renders this benefit. We hypothesize that it is due to factors theorized to accrue to matrimony, such as elevated financial status and specific social psychological supports. We examine the trajectory of subjective well-being for 1,135 respondents from the three-wave 2010 GSS panel survey utilizing linear mixed-effects modeling. We find that about two-fifths of the marriage advantage in subjective well-being is accounted for by a mixture of control variables, finances, and emotional factors, with most of this due to elements that are associated with the marital context...

COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, and the world has witnessed significant changes since then. Spain has been forced to go into extreme lockdown, cancelling all school classes and outdoor activities for children. Our study explores how parents of a group of school children aged 7 to 8 years have experienced confinement due to the COVID-19 health crisis. Following a narrative methodology, the results have been organized around a story that takes as a reference the period of confinement for a mother and worker in times of confinement...

What is the relationship between work-to-family conflict (WFC) and children's problems with school, friends, and health? And does that association depend on household economic conditions and couple relationship quality? Using four waves of longitudinal data from the Canadian Work, Stress, and Heath Study (2011-2017), the present study finds that-overall-both fathers' and mothers' levels of WFC are associated with elevated levels of children's problems over time. However, we also discover that household income and spousal disputes moderate this focal relationship-and they do so differently for mothers and fathers...

This study examined whether attachment predicts changes in commitment and whether commitment predicts changes in attachment in both partners during the transition to parenthood. Both partners of 93 couples completed online questionnaires individually at the second trimester of pregnancy and at 4 months postpartum. Autoregressive cross-lagged path analyses based on the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model tested the bidirectional associations between attachment dimensions (anxiety and avoidance) and three modes of commitment (optimal, over-commitment, and under-commitment)...

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health ( N = 1,366), we examine how major life course statuses are related to sibling relationships during emerging adulthood with attention to similarities and differences in these statuses between sibling dyads. We find that full-time employment, marriage/cohabitation, and parenthood are related to more distant sibling relationships, whereas college education is related to closer sibling relationships. Similarities in employment between the siblings are related to closer relationships, but differences in education, marriage/cohabitation, and parenthood are related to closer relationships, in that respondents report more help-seeking and emotional closeness with their siblings who have higher education than theirs; unpartnered respondents report more calls and fewer fights with their partnered siblings; and childless respondents report more visits and emotional closeness with their parenting siblings...

The fertility influence of spousal intimate relationships is unknown. Drawing on the Giddens's theory of transformation of intimacy, this study proposed a hypothesis that couples supporting egalitarian intimate relationships, with a greater risk profile attached to the relationship, and having less attachments to the external normative pressures shaping marital relations, are more likely to have low-fertility intentions and preferences. Using data from a self-administered pilot survey ( n = 375 prospective grooms and brides) designed by the authors, and employing multivariate regression models, we found that the lower attachment to external social forces in mate selection was associated with the lower ideal number of children, and those with a greater spousal relational egalitarianism and a higher risk profile attached to their relationships preferred lower number of children and were less likely to intend to have children after marriage...

This study examined the experiences of families with school-aged children during the first three months of the 2020 pandemic of COVID-19 in the United States, while focusing on the roles of income level and race/ethnicity in their experiences. Two hundred and twenty-three parents of school-aged children participated in this study by completing an online survey. The results revealed that low-income and lower-middle class parents, as well as parents of color, experienced more instrumental and financial hardships due to the pandemic, when compared to their higher income, White counterparts...