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| Below is the newest installation of Research News Reporter (RNR) Online. Each month a new edition will be posted. Previous editions can be viewed in the Archives. |
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July 2003 |
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IWPR’s
Research News Reporter is distributed monthly to highlight inventive,
informative, innovative, and sometimes controversial research relating to
women and their families. Each
selection includes a short description of the research and either a link
to the report itself or a citation of where the report can be accessed. 1.
40-Hour Work Proposal Significantly Raises Mothers’ Employment
Standard This
Research-in-Brief examines the implications of the new 40-hour-a-week,
year-round work requirement that Congress is considering for TANF
recipients. The author finds
that while three-quarters of mothers do work for pay, only two-fifths of
mothers work the year-long 40-hours-a-week schedule that Congress would
require under this pending legislation.
Clearly such an increase would require poor mothers to make
difficult choices between work, child care, and poverty.
http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/D457.pdf 2.
Why Congress Should Ignore Radical Feminist Opposition to
Marriage This
report, written in support of President Bush’s initiative to promote
marriage as a means to escape poverty, traces the rise of “radical
feminism” and the “habitual radical feminist hostility” to marriage
itself. The authors argue
that marriage will help lift poor single mothers and their children out of
poverty, and Congress should therefore support marriage promotion as an
integral part of welfare reauthorization.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/bg1662.cfm The Heritage Foundation report cites a number of activists and researchers who have actively sought to have marriage promotion removed from welfare legislation. Below are a selection of reports by researchers who were singled out by the Heritage Foundation as anti-marriage, (including IWPR’s own Avis Jones-DeWeever). Marriage
Promotion and Low-Income Communities: An Examination of Real Needs and
Real Solutions Statement
in Opposition to Promotion of Marriage As a Public Policy Strategy for
Ending Women’s Poverty Testimony
for Senate Finance Committee Hearing: “Issues in TANF Reauthorization:
Building Stronger Families” 3.
Risk Factors for Femicide in Abusive Relationships: Results from a
Multisite Case Control Study This
report identifies risk factors for femicide in abusive relationships.
The authors of the 11-city study find a number of expected factors
were associated with increased risk of femicide, including the
perpetrator’s access to a gun and his estrangement from the victim.
However, the authors also find that the male partner’s employment
status is the most important related demographic factor.
This finding has important implications during the current economic
downturn. This
report is available in the July edition of the American Journal of
Public Health, which can also be purchased online at: http://www.ajph.org/content/vol93/issue7/index.shtml 4.
Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America In
this book, the author examines policy attempts to deconcentrate poor urban
residents by dispersing subsidized housing in an attempt to solve a range
of low-income problems associated with a high concentration of urban poor.
Using Minneapolis-St.Paul as a model, the author examines the
complicated processes and unforeseen results that such a program
instigates and explores the many sides of this contentious issue. To
order this book online, visit http://www.urban.org/pubs/clearing/index.html,
or call 1-877-847-7377. 5.
Does Amount of Time in Child Care Predict Socioemotional
Adjustment? Morning
to Afternoon Increases in Cortisol Concentrations for Infants and Toddlers
at Child Care: Age Differences and Behavioral Correlates This
pair of studies published in the journal Child Development will
likely spark more controversy in the debate over the effects that child
care has on children’s emotional and physical health.
The NICHD study, part of the largest long-term study of child care
in the United States, finds that the more time that children spend in
child care, the more likely they were to have behavior problems, such as
aggression. The other study
finds that children have higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, when
they were in child care than the days when they were home.
These
studies are available in the July/August edition of Child Development,
which can be purchased online at: The
New York Times also wrote an article on these studies, which can be
found on LexisNexis: Turning
a Mass of Data on Child Care Into Advice for Parents
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