CCYP Dissertation Award winners for 2008-2009:
Sunyoung Jung and Erika Weissinger

The University of California at Berkeley Center for Child and Youth Policy (CCYP) is an Organized Research Unit focused on interdisciplinary research and information dissemination on a variety of children's issues at the national, state, and local levels.  The Center brings together the talents of faculty and students from across the U.C. Berkeley campus who share an interest in children's issues and children's policy. The Center offers two (2) fellowships to UCB graduate students advanced to candidacy whose dissertation focuses on a child or youth policy issue.  Reflecting the diversity of the faculty affiliated with the CCYP, the fellowships are designed to attract students from any discipline on campus. This years winners are Sunyoung Jung and Erika Weissinger. Read their abstracts below.

The effects of maternal employment on parenting behaviors of low-income mothers: The “parental economic stress” model and the “work-to-family spillover” model

Sunyoung Jung

This study aims to examine the effects of employment on parenting behaviors of low-income mothers through two distinct and contradictory conceptual frameworks: the parental economic stress model and the negative work-to-family spillover model. While the parental economic stress model focuses on the economic aspects of maternal employment, the negative work-to-family spillover model emphasizes the psychological aspects of maternal employment. The parental economic stress model suggests that employment of low-income mothers improves parenting behaviors through decreased economic hardship, whereas the negative work-to-family spillover model posits that low quality work may cause parenting behaviors to deteriorate – that is, the low-quality work may cancel out the positive effects of increased income through employment. The present study investigates (1) whether maternal employment reduces economic hardship and, thereby, improves parenting behaviors – warmth and affection, negative disciplines, rules for routines, and educational activities – , (2) whether the use of public assistance moderate the relationship between maternal employment and economic hardship, and (3) whether the quality of maternal work mediates the relationship between employment and parenting behaviors. Data on 1,653 pairs of single mothers and their young children whose family income was below 185% of the Federal Poverty Level over all three waves (2001, 2003, & 2005) were drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). The present study uses a structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate a moderating role of public assistance and mediating roles of the economic hardship and the quality of maternal work.

Reasons for Attrition Among Public Adoption Seekers: Findings from interviews with individuals who did not complete the process

Erika Weissinger

State administrators for foster care agencies consistently report that the main reason so many foster children remain in care is that they do not have enough available adoptive parents. A recent study has found that the shortage of available parents can be attributed to problems of retention to a greater extent than problems of recruitment. The purpose of this study is to identify the main reasons general applicant adoption seekers do not complete the adoption process. I explore these theories through in-depth one-on-one interviews with public adoption seekers who did not adopt a foster child. I also interview a subpopulation of public adoption seekers who did adopt a foster child as well as agency social workers involved in the recruitment, training, licensing, and matching process. I find that the most commonly reported reasons for not taking the next step in the adoption process include changes in personal circumstances (such as losing a job, getting divorced, or becoming ill), inability to meet agency requirements (such as an insufficient number of bedrooms or insufficient income), and concerns about the process (such as fear about becoming attached to a child who could be reunified with his or her parents or moved to another adoptive home).  I find that lower-income adoption seekers are more likely to drop out due to insufficient income or because they do not have enough bedrooms in their homes. I find that upper-income adoption seekers are more likely to drop out because they do not have time to attend the adoptive parent training.