Welcome to the Family Science 5, helping you catch up on some of the Family Science research and researchers featured in the media during June 2024.

NCFR member journal subscribers can access full text of journal articles through the NCFR website; you may be prompted to log in.

1. National Geographic interviewed NCFR Fellow Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, Ph.D., and member Karen L. Fingerman, Ph.D., and also referenced several articles from NCFR's Journal of Marriage and Family (JMF), for a story about the health benefits of fatherhood. (The National Geographic article is accessible to subscribers only.)
   
   Men "report improvements in diet and exercise and less substance use after becoming fathers,” Dr. Schoppe-Sullivan said, referring to the 2004 JMF article "Does Fatherhood Matter for Men?" whose authors include member Chris Knoester, Ph.D. “And dads who are more involved with their children are more satisfied with their lives and are more connected with friends, family, and community."
   
   Additional JMF articles referenced include:
   1. "Parenthood and Life Satisfaction: Why Don't Children Make People Happy?" (2014)
   2. "The Transition to Fatherhood and the Health of Men" (2020)
   3. "The Importance of Parenting and Financial Contributions in Promoting Fathers' Psychological Health" (2010)
       
2. CNN.com quoted member Stephanie Coontz, M.A., in a piece exploring how parenting can benefit fathers. In a section of the article about the amount of parenting fathers do today, Coontz said, "If you are a woman who has to constantly fight with her husband to get him to help with the kids or do housework, I am sure it is very frustrating. ... But, as a historian, if you step back and look at what men were not doing and refusing to do 20 or 30 years ago and compare that to what they are doing now — from a historical perspective it is quite a turnaround.”
    
3. For its ranking of "Best & Worst States for Working Dads (2024)," WalletHub consulted members Laura Bloom, Ph.D., CFLE, Raymond Petren, Ph.D., and Rob Weisskirch, Ph.D., CFLE, for their insights about issues working fathers face today. You can read responses from Drs. Bloom, Petren, and Weisskirch about fathers' use of family leave policies, how fathers can balance family and career, and fathers' employment outside the home or being a stay-at-home parent.
    
4. CU Denver News at the University of Colorado-Denver published a profile of member Renée Wilkins-Clark, Ph.D., CFLE, highlighting her journey to becoming a Family Scientist and her work as a student and now as a faculty member. The article notes a recent grant Dr. Wilkins-Clark and her colleagues received "to examine intergenerational racial and ethnic socialization and discrimination within Black and Latinx populations," and her interest in interdisciplinary collaborations with neuroscientists to investigate the physiological changes that discrimination stress can cause in the body.
    
5. Phys.org featured a new open-access JMF article suggests benefits to families in Singapore when child care support is provided by maternal grandparents. The article, "Grandparents' and Domestic Helpers' Childcare Support: Implications for Well-Being in Asian Families," investigated child care support by material grandparents, paternal grandparents, and domestic helpers; results showed that child care support "from maternal grandparents, but not from paternal grandparents or domestic helpers, showed concurrent associations with warmer parenting by mothers at child ages 4.5 and 6 years. Early childcare support from domestic helpers at child age 6 years predicted higher depressive symptoms in children at age 10 years."