Mothers' Union Statuses and their Involvement in Young Children's Schooling.
U.S. schools often expect the educational involvement of parents, which may be facilitated when parents have partners, especially a partner also invested in the child. As such, parental involvement at school and at home could be a channel of the diverging destinies of U.S. children from different families. This study applied fixed effects modeling to the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) to examine the link between mothers' union statuses and their involvement behaviors. Being partnered appeared to benefit mothers' school and home involvement when children were in the primary grades, with little evidence of an additional benefit from that partnership being marital. A biological tie between the male partner and the child only seemed to matter for mothers' school involvement. These patterns did not vary by family income, maternal depression, or maternal employment, but they were stronger when children were just beginning schooling.
PhD Candidate, Graduate Student, Department of Sociology, Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. 512-270-1404.
Robert
R
Ressler
PhD Candidate, Graduate Student, Department of Sociology, Graduate Student Trainee, Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. 314-443-4463.
Chelsea
C
Smith
Associate Professor Department of Sociology and Population Research Center University of Texas at Austin, 512-471-8319, http://liberalarts.utexas.edu/prc/directory/faculty/sec429.
Shannon
S
Cavanagh
C.B. Smith, Sr. Centennial Chair #4 & Department Chair, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Sociology | Population Research Center 512.471.8329, http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/prc/directory/faculty/crosnoer.
Robert
R
Crosnoe
early childhood; family process; inequality; parental involvement; schools