Effects of child support and welfare policies on nonmarital teenage childbearing and motherhood

This paper is an assessment of the impact of child support enforcement and welfare policies on nonmarital teenage childbearing and motherhood. We derive four hypotheses about the effects of policies on nonmarital teenage childbearing and motherhood. We propose that teenage motherhood and school enrollment are joint decisions for teenage girls. Based on individual trajectories during ages 12–19, our analysis uses an event history model for nonmarital teenage childbearing and a dynamic model of motherhood that is jointly determined with school enrollment. We find some evidence that child support policies indirectly reduce teen motherhood by increasing the probability of school enrollment, which, in turn, reduces the probability of teen motherhood. This finding suggests that welfare offices may wish to place greater weight on outreach programs that inform more teenagers of the existence of strong child support enforcement measures. Such programs might reduce nonmarital teen motherhood further and thus reduce the need for welfare support and child support enforcement in the long run.

Palestinian-Israeli single mothers accord motherhood a new meaning ‘I would like to teach my children a new way of life … I'm responsible for them now’

Over the last three decades, Palestinian society in Israel has undergone numerous changes, reflected in the rising numbers of families headed by single mothers. This article is based on a study conducted between 2007 and 2011 among 24 divorced, separated, and widowed Palestinian single mothers in Israel. I analyze this emerging family configuration, focusing on these women’s experiences as mothers and on how they accord new meaning to motherhood. My analysis will deal with the diverse ways these women ‘do motherhood’ and negotiate with different familial players. It will extend beyond the discourse on motherhood to shed light on the current changes in power and gender relations taking place in Palestinian-Israeli society.     

Making Sense of After‐School Care Dilemmas in Mothers' Stories of After‐School Care in Finland and Sweden

The study focuses on dilemmas in storied experiences of everyday after‐school care arrangements among Swedish and Finnish mothers. Finland and Sweden, which share a history of strong labour market attachment among women, arrange institutional after‐school care in similar ways. The data consist of interviews with three Swedish and six Finnish mothers. A positioning analysis of four stories shows how decisions related to children's after‐school hours were allocated among different actors. Two reoccurring dilemmas, Competent‐dependent child stories and Unburdened‐deficient mother stories, emerged from the data analysis as related to prevailing moral discourses on childhood and motherhood.     

Becoming the mother of a child with disabilities: a systematic literature review

The transition to motherhood starts early in pregnancy and is completed when the mother feels competent in caring for the infant. Becoming the mother of a child with disabilities is demanding as their needs are complex. The aim of the review was to appraise completed qualitative and quantitative reports on the challenges of mothers of children with disabilities regarding their own transition to motherhood. A review of the literature was carried out through, first, a computerized search strategy to identify relevant studies from selected databases and, second, quality appraisal and thematic analysis of selected studies. The transition to motherhood of children with disabilities takes place in the inside world at home, the outside world external to home and the ‘going-between’ world of travelling between the two worlds. The mothers are challenged at home to integrate basic infant care with technical care of their children. In the outside world they often struggled to ensure that their children got the necessary professional care. Travelling between their homes and healthcare services posed many problems.     

Motherhood Penalties and Living Arrangements in China

Past research on the “motherhood wage penalty” has been based on data from nuclear families, leaving open the possibility that the motherhood wage penalty may be lower or even absent in multigenerational families. In this article, the wage gap between mothers and nonmothers is examined in nuclear and multigenerational families in the context of contemporary China, which has a long tradition of patriarchal families. Using 1993 to 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey data, the magnitude and variation of motherhood penalty is explored with fixed effects models among 1,058 women. The results show that each additional child lowers hourly wages by about 12%. In addition, the motherhood penalty is largest for women living with their husbands' parents, smaller for women not living with parents, and nil for women living with their own parents.     

High Educational Aspirations Among Pregnant Adolescents Are Related to Pregnancy Unwantedness and Subsequent Parenting Stress and Inadequacy

On the basis of theories of maternal identity development, role conflict, and childbearing motivation, the authors tested whether high educational aspirations among pregnant adolescents are related to the unwantedness of the pregnancy and whether pregnancy unwantedness leads to subsequent parenting stress and inadequacy. Longitudinal data from 100 first‐time‐pregnant, unmarried Latina adolescents (M age = 17.3 years) were analyzed. Results from structural equation path modeling confirmed these associations, with strong educational ambitions related to greater unwantedness of the pregnancy, which led to feeling trapped by parenting at 6 months postpartum, which in turn was related to unaffectionate parenting and feeling inadequate in mothering at 1 year postpartum. The potential long‐term negative consequences of high educational aspirations for pregnant adolescents' adjustment to parenting are discussed.     

The Palestinian Family in Israel: Simultaneous Trends

In this article, I seek to present the spectrum of contemporary family structures in Palestinian society in Israel, focusing on those that emerge in various contexts of changes in education, employment and place of residence. To enable attention to the multiplicity of identities engendered by intersection of the positions of gender/class/nationality and to assess the family patterns that maintain them and are shaped by them, I evaluate relations between two concepts: Connectivity, as proposed by Joseph (1999) and translocational positionality conceived by Anthias (2008). The former relates to the development of a feminine identity that develops in a patriarchal gender context, while the latter refers to the constant negotiation that women conduct with the contexts of their sense of belonging and the manner in which they use various resources. Those concepts help determine whether the process that Palestinian in Israel have been undergoing are accompanied by a greater variety of family patterns.

The article will be based on a study in which I conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Palestinian mothers in Israel. The data were subjected to intersectional analysis from a feminist perspective, enabling study of the group under examination families of Palestinian women –separately from its surrounding society and also revealing the various subgroups comprising this social category.