This study examines linkages between parental work arrangements and mothers subjective wellbeing, asking how mothers market work, the presence of a partner or spouse, and partners work patterns predict subjective well-being while caring for children. Further, it examines potential mediators of these linkages. In doing so, we contribute to the literature on parental employment and parenting by shedding light on contextual features that influence the moment-to-moment interactions between mothers and their children. We find that mothers long work hours are linked to more fatigue in time with children. Additionally, fathers non-employment and long work hours are associated with reductions in maternal well-being while parenting. Not having a partner was strongly associated with mothers subjective well-being in parenting; single mothers were consistently less happy and more sad and stressed in their time with children than were partnered mothers. Finally, looking at a broad range of activities with children, we find that the type of activity matters for subjective well-being in time with kids; playing and socializing are associated with improved well-being, while cleaning and market work are associated with reduced well-being. Most of the parenting activities we assessed, however, reveal the mixed bag of parentingit is meaningful but also stressful. These findings show the value of considering momentary assessments of well-being across a multidimensional set of indicators.

Steady increases in womens labor force participation over the past half century have occurred alongside the ratcheting up of expectations for intensive parenting. We know little about how mothers fare in the context of dual devotions to work and parenting. Using a new module in the 2010 and 2012 American Time Use Surveys, we assess mothers subjective well-being in parenting in the context of her and her partners work arrangements. Preliminary results suggest that compared to non-working mothers, working mothers do less of the desirable parenting tasks like play and more of that which is less desirable. This differential may explain working mothers lower happiness and higher stress and fatigue in parenting.Further, mothers working full-time while theirpartners work less than full time report less happiness, more stress, and more fatigue inparenting than those with other workarrangements, even full-time working mothers withfull-time working partners.

The shift towards more time-intensive and child-centered parenting in the U.S. is widely assumed to be positively linked to healthy child development, but implications for adult well-being are less clear. We go beyond prior work on parenthood and well-being to assess the multidimensional nature of mothers and fathers subjective well-being in time with children. Our emphasis on parenting (activities) as opposed to parenthood (status) draws attention to how the nature and context of time use contribute to differences in parents happiness, meaning, sadness, stress, and fatigue. We posit that time with children may elicit more positive and negative feelings than time without children, particularly among mothers, whose greater investments in childrearing may be associated with more strain but also more meaning. Relying on nationally representative time diary data from the 2010 well-being module of the American Time Use Survey (N = 23,282), we find that parents consistently report more positive affect in time with children than without. Mothers report less happiness, more stress, and greater fatigue (but not more meaning) in time with children than fathers, and their greater fatigue is not explained by mediating factors such as the quality and quantity of sleep and leisure, activity type, or solo parenting.

Recent media attention highlights American womens exceptionalism in the realm of intensive parenting and raises questions about the implications for mothers well-being. In this paper we: 1) assess the multidimensional nature of subjective well-being among women with and without children in the home across a range of activities; and 2) compare mothers subjective well-being while engaged in intensive versus routine childcare. We use new data from the 2010 American Time Use Survey that includes respondent reports of momentary well-being in three randomly selected activities. We leverage within-person variation in reports of meaning, happiness, stress, tiredness, and sadness to assess how the presence of children and other characteristics of activities (whether others present, timing, duration, location) contribute to well-being. We look further at variation in subjective well-being while parenting in the context of time in activities throughout the day, union status, child and parent age, education, employment, and typical sleep duration.

There is more variation in health outcomes within countries than between them, yet major studies of life expectancy, maternal mortality, and infant mortality persistently analyze outcomes at the national level. At the same time, research conducted at the individual level of analysis often fails to take into account the characteristics of populations and places that influence the spread of communicable and parasitic diseases. In order to address both these shortcomings, this paper uses unique data measured at the district level along with geographically weighted regression and exploratory spatial data analysis techniques to model the social, physical, and built environmental determinants of mortality outcomes in Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania. Such a strategy makes it possible to identify the drivers of good, as well as poor, health at the level of analysis most conducive to programmatic interventions.

The age of parents at the birth of their children may have profound implications for the subsequent lifecourse of parents, the functioning of the family, and for child health and well-being. Using historicalcensus data from the Integrated Public Use Micro Series, this research explore three dimensions ofparental age: chronological age (Martin et al. 2009), social age (Mare and Tzeng 1989; Eliason et al.2009), and relationship age (Bachu 1999) from the early 1900s until 2008. Little is known about longtermhistorical shifts in these dimensions of age, and to our knowledge, there has been no systematicinvestigation of their interdependence. This research addresses the transformation of family life byinvestigating historical change in three dimensions of parental age and the ways in which thedimensions are woven together.

Using data from three waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (N=1963), we examine associations between adolescent family experiences and young adult well-being across a range of indicators, including schooling, substance use, and family-related transitions. We compare children living with both biological parents, but whose parents differ in how often they argue, to children in stepfather and single-mother families, and we assess the extent to which differences can be understood in terms of family income and parenting practices. Findings suggest that parental conflict is associated with children's poorer academic achievement, increased substance use, and early family formation and dissolution. Living in single-mother and stepfather families tend to be more strongly associated with our indicators of well-being, although differences between these family types and living with high conflict continuously married parents are often statistically indistinguishable. Income and parenting largely do not account for associations between adolescent family type and later life outcomes. We conclude that while children do better, on average, living with two biological married parents, the advantages of two-parent families are not shared equally by all. © 2010 Elsevier Inc.

Celebrities breaking up, making up, and having kids out of wedlock. Politicians confessing to extramarital affairs and visits to prostitutes. Same-sex couples pushing for, and sometimes getting, legal recognitionfor their committed relationships. Today's news provides a steady stream of stories that seem to suggest that lifelong love and (heterosexual)marriage are about as dated as a horse and carriage. Social conservatives continue sounding the alarm about the consequences of the decline ofmarriage and the rise of unwed parenting for children and for society at large. Are we really leaving behind the old model of intimacy, or are these changes significant but not radical? And what are the driving forces behind the changes?

Recent decades have brought significant social changes in the industrialized West that may influence young adults' attitudes about intimate relationships, including changes in gender expectations and behaviors and changes in sexual attitudes and practices. We used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 14,121) to compare men to women and sexual minorities to heterosexuals on ratings of the importance of love, faithfulness, commitment, financial security, and racial homogamy for successful relationships. We found that nearly all young adults adhere to dominant relationship values inherent in the romantic love ideology; we found, however, modest but significant differences by gender and sexual identity in relationship values. Significant interactions demonstrated that gender and sexual identity intersect to uniquely influence relationship views. © National Council on Family Relations, 2009.